The Snow Queen and the Dragon Rider
by Fluffy Nabs
Summary: Elsa is approached by an enigmatic man who asks her for the impossible. Can she overcome her fear, or will love save the day? Complete! Please read and check out the sequel in-progress, "The Year of the Dragon!" *Amazing image credit goes to: PortiaGM /portiagm/art/Hiccelsa-HD-Wallpaper-570958929
1. Chapter 1

Hello! I hope you like my story - this is definitely Hiccup/Elsa, rated T for Teen for some adult references, but honestly this is going to be tamer than most of what you'd see on broadcast TV these days. A few notes before we begin:

This takes place after Frozen II, during the 1840s, and How to Train Your Dragon took place during the 1st century, or AD 1 to 100. That means that Hiccup (Hiksti is Old Norse word for Hiccup and that's the name I'll use in this story) is very, very old.

Trigger warning: references to death, suicide attempts

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Elsa's cheeks were still glowing with happiness when she made her way up the Ahtohallan. Charades was fun, as it usually was, and Anna was settling in very nicely to her role as Queen of Arendelle. She and Kristoff were to be married in six months time, and preparations were already underway. Olaf was thrilled to be the ring-bearer, and they'd all been giggling over plans for Kristoff to ride to the wedding on Sven, who would be appropriately washed and decked out with the finest harness gold could buy.

Elsa debated internally whether she should explain to Anna about the wedding night. She'd learned about the facts of life when she'd started her moon cycle, and her mother had sat her down to explain. That had been perhaps four years before their parents had set sail on their last, fatal trip. But Anna… Elsa didn't know if Anna had had the same talk. And knowing her little sister, she may have been too embarrassed to listen intently and ask the right questions, at the time.

She made her way into the glacier slowly, taking her time while she imagined how awkward that conversation was going to be, and wondering if she'd have to find someone to explain to Kristoff what was expected of him. Being raised by trolls certainly raised a giant question-mark over that issue. How were troll-babies even made, any way?

Elsa's ruminations stopped cold when the realization that she was not alone slammed into her. She stopped where she was, just before the ice-steps leading down to the Reflection Room, as she'd taken to calling it.

A man stood there. About six feet tall, with lean muscles and with an artificial left leg. He had shaggy brown hair, and when he slowly turned to face her, she saw wide, intelligent green eyes and an open face that just screamed trustworthiness, with a short, well-kept beard and mustache. Freckles were scattered over his otherwise pale skin, and his expression was very calm and very serious. His hands were empty and he slowly spread his fingers wide, showing her his vacant palms.

"Who are you?" Elsa asked. Automatically her feet had slid into the 12-and-5 position, and her hands, too, were open, palms out. But power gathered beneath her skin, cold and joyful, ready to do her bidding.

"I mean you no harm," said the man. "My name is Hiksti," he said. "I've been waiting for you for a long time."

"You shouldn't be here," she said coldly. Her heart thudded loudly in her ears and this was _wrong_ that someone else was in here, this was _not allowed,_ how dare he?!

"My apologies," he said. "I thought maybe you were in there. But I gotta confess, this…" he gestured to the steps behind him, which were more like pillars of ice set at leaping distance the cross a gaping chasm. "... this kind of presented a challenge. I was trying to figure out the best way to cross."

She realized now that he had come prepared, a pack and lots of rope and ice-climbing supplies laying next to him in a tidy pile.

"It's not meant for just anyone to cross," Elsa said.

"I'm not just anyone," Hiksti told her calmly.

They stared at each other for a good solid minute before Elsa slowly relaxed her stance. The magic she kept close, ready to protect herself if he made any sudden moves. "Why are you here?"

"I was looking for you," he said. "Because I think… you can help me."

"Let's go out," she said, gesturing to the tunnel she'd just come from. "We can talk in the sunlight." She was desperate to have him leave.

"Alright," he agreed. Then he turned slowly and started packing up his things again. She waited patiently until he had everything on his back, and then she waved him past her. He smiled just a little bit and nodded, then preceded her back out.

Once they were in the sunshine, Hiksti made straight for a large boulder and set down his things, then sat next to them with a sigh. "Do you mind?" he asked, holding up his artificial leg.

Elsa heaved a silent sigh of relief once he was out of the glacier and raised an eyebrow. "No?" she said.

He took off his artificial leg and set it next to him, then started to massage the stump. He still had his own knee, she noted, and the metal foot of his prosthesis was made for walking on ice, with sharp, short metal spikes lining the bottom. "I've been on it all day," he explained. "It gets sore, sometimes." The Snow Queen just stared at him. He ignored that and finished his massage, then slid the leg back on, tightening straps and making adjustments until it was snug. "Most people are curious," he said. "About how I lost it."

She _was_ curious. "How _did _you lose it?" she asked cautiously.

"A dragon," he said. Those intelligent green eyes shot up to her face as he said it, to judge her reaction.

"There's no such thing as dragons," she told him, a smile tugging at her mouth.

"No, not any more," he agreed. His voice was sad, and he sounded so… old. "Believe me, I've looked."

Elsa blinked, suddenly wondering just how old this Hiksti was. He didn't look much older than her. There was no grey in his hair, which in the light of the sun had a slight reddish tinge to the brown, and there were only faint crow's feet around his eyes. He had calluses on his hands that bespoke of hard work and went with the sword at his side. "Why were you looking for me?" she asked. "How did you find this place?"

"A lullabye," Hiksti told her. "A very old song… I realized it was a prophecy, you know, about you. _For_ you. And after I heard that the Snow Queen of Arendelle abdicated her throne to go live in the North with savages - the story is spreading like wildfire, you know - it all clicked into place. I got here as fast as I could."

Else knew exactly what song he meant. "So… why are you looking for _me_?"

"Because I need your help," he told her. "I need you to break a curse that was laid on me by a trickster god."

"What kind of curse?" she asked, intrigued despite herself.

"A curse of immortality," he said quietly, and stood up. He stepped toward her, slowly, still showing with every line of his body that he meant her no harm. "I want... to die," he told her. "Will you help me?"


	2. Chapter 2

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Elsa reeled back. "What?!" she gasped. Unbidden came the memory of those soldiers cornering her in her ice palace, of how very easy it had been to lose herself in fear and anger, of how _close_ she'd gotten to taking a life. A queasy feeling rose up in her throat and roiled in her stomach. "Are you mad?"

"No," Hiksti said. "Just very, very tired."

"Of _course_ I won't kill you," she said, slashing her hand toward the ground for emphasis. Spikes of ice shot from her fingers and embedded themselves into the permafrost.

"I didn't ask that," Hiksti said, his eyes on the ice spikes. He didn't seem surprised, but Else supposed that her powers were pretty much common knowledge by now, and anyone who'd go to the trouble to track her down here surely already know of them. "I just asked you to take away my curse."

"Your immortality curse," she said acidly.

"Yeah, that one," he said. "I don't have any others that I'm aware of." He gave her a slight grin.

"So that you can _die_."

"Yeah," he agreed. He made it sound like dying was as valuable as a vault full of diamonds.

"But… let's say for argument's sake that you are, in fact, immortal," she said.

"Which is true," he agreed amiably.

"Then why can't you die? Have you… have you tried before?" The thought made her uneasy.

"Oh, yeah, loads of times," he said.

"What?" she asked, aghast.

"I've been run through, beheaded, defenestrated, drowned, burned - do not recommend that one, by the way - buried alive, poisoned... let's see, what else? Shot. Several times. Arrows and bullets."

Elsa was peering at his throat, which seemed unblemished. "You don't have any scars," she said.

"Oh, no, I've got lots of scars, but they're all from before the curse." He slapped his left knee to indicate his amputated leg. "This, too."

"You're crazy," she breathed. "That's the only explanation." She drew herself up and pointed toward the mainland. "Leave. Don't return." She was about to turn and sweep imperiously back into her glacier when he took out a knife.

"You know, it hurts every time," he said conversationally.

And then he cut his own throat.

His blood, bright as rubies, spurted in great rhythmic gushes from his carotid artery, splashing across the ground and steaming in the frigid air. He collapsed sideways and Elsa screamed. She rushed forward and tried to stop the bleeding, pressed her hands to the wound, but he'd done his job too well and within seconds the bleeding stopped. He died.

Elsa sobbed hysterically, at a total loss as to what to do with her hands. She was soaked in his life's blood, rapidly cooling, sticking her dress to her skin.

And then the wound closed and he sat up, wincing and rubbing his neck. Elsa, still kneeling just next to him, covered in his blood, was stunned speechless.

"Sorry. I _hate_ doing that," he said. "But it's the quickest way to convince someone that I'm not a lunatic."

"What… just happened?" Elsa whispered, utterly shell-shocked.

"I cut my throat, bled to death, and magically revived," Hiksti explained patiently. "Take your time." He had no shortage of it.

She slowly got to her feet and he mimicked her. She backed away. He stayed where he was. "You really are immortal," she said. The horror of it crawled up her throat, and she spun away from him and vomited.

"Sorry," he said again.

Panting, Elsa spat to clear her mouth, formed an ice cube and swirled it around her mouth until it melted and then spat again, trying to get the taste of stomach acid off of her tongue. Then she gestured at him to stay where he was, and she turned and marched herself right into the ocean.

The freezing temperature didn't bother her in the slightest, and it washed away his blood. She took care to scrub it from her skin, out of her hair, her clothes, and then emerged dripping from the sea. A gesture of her hands and she was dry again.

The icy bath had helped to clear her head, and she narrowed her eyes at him. "Why do you think that I can break this curse of yours, Hiksti?"

"Because you're the fifth element," he said. "Magic. Magic curse, magic queen… it can't hurt to try. And you broke the curse on the forest."

"That was… different," she said. And no little part of that curse-breaking had been thanks to Anna.

"Will you try?" he asked. "Please?" His wide green eyes pleaded with her, so very open and honest. "Everyone I've ever loved is long dead," he said quietly, and walked slowly toward her. "Can you imagine that? My beautiful wife, my precious children… my grandchildren… my best friends..." he shook his head. "I watched them all grow old and wither. Even their bones are gone, now." He stopped just a couple of feet away. "Can you imagine my pain?"

Elsa's eyes grew wide. She thought of Anna, bright and oh, so young, imagined watching her sister whiten and bend with age while she herself stayed young, imagined burying her and not even having the solace of joining her in Heaven… she shook her head, pity welling within her. "I'll… I'll try," she said.

He closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged, his body language pure relief. "Thank you," he said. He held out his hands to her and almost instinctively Elsa slipped her own hands into his. "Thank you," he told her again. "Thank you."


	3. Chapter 3

Yay, reviews! Thank you so much! I appreciate hearing that you like the story, it really motivates me!

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Elsa didn't sleep in the glacier. That would be crazy.

She slept in the Northuldran village, of course. She'd slept for a while in one of the wooden goahti for a week or so, but having grown up in a castle, Elsa's sensibilities had demanded something a bit more… well, _more_.

Traditionally the Northuldra were a nomadic people who followed their reindeer herds and had housing that was easily disassembled and moved and reassembled as necessary. But being stuck in one forest for 34 years tended to shift one's priorities, and there did exist a permanent village.

With the help of some carpenters loaned by the new queen of Arendelle, the previous queen of Arendelle had designed and built a comfortable little log cabin with all the amenities a girl could want - except for plumbing. Little being relative - it _was_ little... compared to the castle. She had a well just outside, a water pump in her kitchen - not that she knew how to use said kitchen - two bedrooms (one for Anna's visits) - a small dining room, and a large living room with an extremely efficient fireplace. She had a second floor, as well, consisting of a singular large room comfortably furnished for meetings, with plenty of seating, blankets, and more pillows than were strictly necessary. There was plenty of room for expansion, once Elsa had nieces and nephews to host. The cabin was, of course, tastefully decorated, and contained a few glass windows - the village's first, and a point of fascination for them.

The villagers used the well - it was a lot more convenient than trudging down to the river - and the children played almost relentlessly on the half-dozen swings hanging from sturdy tree boughs, swayed and buoyed by Gale, when she was feeling playful. Bruni had a home there - a small stone house with a permanent block of ice for him to nestle on. The children made regular gifts of food to him, and he repaid their kindness with easy evening cooking fires no matter how wet the wood was.

Hiksti had taken his little skiff across the water and Elsa, after erecting a formidable ice door at the entrance to the glacier, had ridden the Nokk (after Hiksti had changed into fresh clothes and washed the blood off his skin). They hadn't spoken much more than her giving him directions and the occasional murmur to coordinate their movement across the sea and through the forest. Once back on the continent the Nokk and galloped back into the sea, Hiksti watching it with a keenly interested eye, and then they'd walked the rest of the way.

The villagers stared, of course. Their magical Snow Queen had gone to her place of power and brought back a strange man, why wouldn't they stare? But she forestalled any questions with an apologetic smile and an upraised hand, and they'd respected that and let them pass in peace.

"Sami?" Hiksti asked.

"Northuldran," she'd answered.

"Ah."

She led him into her little cottage and he looked around appreciatively, pausing to pick up a nick-nack before putting it back down again. "Nice," he told her.

"Thank you. You can sleep in Anna's room." She pointed.

He went into the room and came back out again a few moments later, his pack deposited on the floor by the bed. "Your sister?" he asked. "The new queen of Arendelle?"

"Yes," she told him stiffly.

"She… visits?"

"Sometimes."

They stood in awkward silence, Hiksti gazing at her steadily. She opened her mouth to offer him some water when he spoke, just a hair faster. "You remind me of her."

She paused and tilted her head. "Like who?"

"My wife," he said. "Ástríðr." He sighed. "Paler… slimmer. A bit more fine-boned… but there are similarities." Then he smiled. "She'd hate the comparison. She was… fire. Rough and steady, fierce. Not at all a _lady_."

"How old are you, Hiksti?" She came directly to the point, trying to ignore her irritation that he didn't peg her as fierce, which she most certainly was.

Hiksti shrugged and sat down on the couch before the fireplace, which was cold. He sprawled out, one arm slung along the back and his prosthetic resting across his opposite knee. "About as old as Christianity," he said. "Give or take."

A brief sense of vertigo overtook her and she carefully placed a hand on the back of a chair before gracefully coming around it to sit across from him. "That's very old. And… you remember her, after all this time?"

"I remember… everything," he said, his voice low, his eyes distant. He took out a little notebook from within his shirt and opened it up. Yellowed parchment contained a charcoal drawing of a young woman with a fringe of hair half-obscuring her eyes and a thick braid. The suggestion of furs was drawn about her shoulders, and her expression was laughing.

"She's beautiful," Elsa said softly. She could see what he meant, though this woman's jaw and nose were wider - there was a similarity around the eyes.

"Yeah," Hiksti agreed. He put it away. "I've kept her waiting in Valhalla for too long. She might have re-married, by now." Then he sat forward and put his fake foot on the floor and rested his elbows on his knees. "So… any ideas on how you can fix my problem?"

"You'll have to tell me all about it, first," she said.

He nodded and proceeded to tell her.

He'd been around 29 or 30 years old, happily settled down, with two beautiful children. He'd been the chief of his tribe, and innovation was something he'd sought after, always striving to improve the day-to-day lives of his people.

One day he'd heard a story from a passing merchant that a new island had appeared in the sea, smoking and belching fire. Out of curiosity Hiksti had sailed out to see it. His friends had come with him, a pair of twins, man and woman. He hadn't realized at the time that they'd planned to use the raw power of the new island to summon their god, Loki.

Loki had arrived, alright, and he hadn't been pleased. Turns out gods can be a tad upset when mortals summon them for trivial reasons. He'd been about to smite them when Hiksti had begged for mercy on their behalf, taking the blame for their foolishness as their leader.

"No one has to die, I said," Hiksti's voice was low and steady. "And that's what gave him the idea, I think. He said I was right, and then everything was..." he brought his hand up and swirled it in the air, groping for the right words. "...white light and ringing in my ears, and I woke up a week later in my own bed. I put it down to pure dumb luck, and it took me about ten years to realize that I wasn't actually aging, any more."

Elsa remained silent, thinking about his story.

"And then," he continued. "I died for the first time. Stupid accident. A tree fell on me. Just… fell. It took six men to lift it off of me, and anyone could see that I'd been impaled. And I bled out, right there on the forest floor." He paused. "And then I came back to life, right there on the forest floor. They ran away from me. When I went home Ástríðr sent me away again. She followed a week later with the children and we went into hiding together. At first we tried to find that island, but it was gone. There was no trace of it anywhere. It just sank beneath the waves again."

"It wasn't long before my children found spouses of their own and moved out, settled down. Ástríðr and I kept going. We moved every ten years or so, from island to island, keeping our heads down. I stayed with her when she looked old enough to be my mother. When she looked old enough to be my grandmother. I held her hand when she died, ancient and white and… faded." He shook his head. "I returned her body to the children and bade them goodbye, held my grandchildren for the last time, and left."

"Since then I've travelled all over the world, Old and New, trying to find a cure for this. You're my last hope."

"And what will you do if I can't help?" Elsa asked, half-terrified to learn.

"I'll just… jump in a volcano or something. That's just about the only thing I haven't tried, yet."

"You say you've been burned to death, though?" Elsa asked, sickened by the thought.

"Yeah. That's the worst. But even then I'll just come back. Eventually. It takes a while."

"What makes you think a volcano will kill you permanently?"

"Hope," he said. His voice was flat. "That's everything, anyway. How it started."

"I don't… I don't know…" she shook her head. "Loki, the trickster god. A curse from him would be divine in nature, I… my magic is… not divine."

"Hm." He stared at her. "Please don't give up before you've even started. I'm sure if we put our heads together we can figure something out."

Elsa clasped her hands together, unclasped them, watched as frost formed on her fingertips, unbidden. "I… want to ask something of you, before we start," she said, trying to curb the nerves in her stomach.

"What is it?" He sounded a bit wary. His eyes darted around the room as rime began to coat every surface of the room.

"If I can break the curse… I want you to just… live out the rest of your life. Let yourself grow old and die of natural causes."

He stared at her for a long, long, time, considering. "That'll ease your conscience?" By now there were icicles hanging from every horizontal surface and he could see his breath.

She nodded solemnly.

"Alright, I suppose. What's another fifty or sixty years?" He stuck his hand out. "Deal."

She slipped her own hand into his and they shook on it, and the ice she'd unconsciously conjured melted away without a trace. "Deal."


	4. Chapter 4

They sat together at the dining room table, a cozy affair only big enough for, at most, eight people. A crisp white sheet of paper sat before Elsa, with a fresh quill and a pot of ink. Hiksti had the same supplies in front of his own seat.

"You could take me into the glacier," he said, and jotted that down.

Elsa did, too, though very reluctantly. She was loathe to share it with anyone an cast about for an alternative. "Perhaps some kind of meditation?"

"Yeah, I… guess?" he said. "I have no idea how you power works."

"Well, neither do I, much," she admitted. "It just… does. I just think of what I want to do, and do it. Usually."

"Okay," he said slowly. "Can you just think away my curse?"

Else stared at him very intently for a full minute. Hiksti stared back, hardly breathing, his wide green eyes trained resolutely on hers. Neither of them even blinked. Then she tilted her head. "Feel any different?"

"No," he admitted. "Hold on." He stabbed his hand with his quill, causing Elsa to twitch in alarm. The wound healed almost instantly. "Nope, still cursed."

"Do you have to do that?" she asked crossly, yanking the quill out of the chunk of ice she'd formed around it.

"Short of actually killing myself again, how else am I supposed to test it?" he asked curiously. "And I can't do that on purpose any more."

"Riiight," she said slowly. "Because you promised."

"I did," he agreed. "And I try to keep my promises. A man's only as good as his word."

"Okay. So… stabbing. Yeesh." She suppressed a horrified shudder. "Thinking it away didn't work. We could talk to the trolls."

"Trolls?" he said, perking up a bit. "Little stone people? Love experts?"

"You know them?" Elsa asked.

"I've met a few, before. There are trolls in Arendelle?"

"Yes. They might have some ideas."

"Couldn't hurt," he said thoughtfully. They both jotted it down.

"We could ask a priest," Elsa suggested, already turning over in her mind the priests in town, at least three of which didn't consider her an abomination.

"Been there, done that," he muttered. "For just about every religion out there."

"Oh." She scratched it off of her paper. "Have you ever frozen to death?" she asked with morbid curiosity.

"Once or twice," he admitted casually. "One of the nicer ways to go, toward the end. But getting to that bit at the end _is _pretty terrible."

"Plague?"

"Half a dozen times."

"Spider bite?"

"Yep."

"Torn apart by wild animals?"

"Fourteen times. And eleven times by dogs."

"Oh, god, _dogs_?" She was aghast.

Hiksti shrugged. "I've lived a long time."

Elsa was quiet for a moment. "I froze to death once. Sort of. Well… 'to death' may be too strong, but…"

"Oh, there has to be a story behind that," he said. "What happened?"

"I dove too far," she said, staring at the white plume of her quill. "Into Ahtohallan."

"The prophecy," Hiksti said.

She glanced up at him, and then nodded. "I'm not sure if it was punishment for my grandfather's sins or…" she shook her head. "But I was cold for the first time in my life. Paralyzed by it. And I froze. Anna saved me."

"Your little sister sounds amazing."

Finally a bit of warmth crept into Elsa's expression as she thought of her sister, and she inclined her head. "She is. I'm lucky to have her."

"Sounds like it." Hiksti's eyes shuttered and he looked down at his own paper, his expression blank.

Elsa immediately felt as if she'd put her foot in her mouth, to be so openly happy about her family when his had died so long ago. "Sorry," she murmured.

He shook his head once, dismissing it. "Have you tried summoning?" he asked.

"Summoning? Like spirits?"

"Sure."

"… No. I can usually call for Gale and the Nokk when I want to, but sometimes they're busy or too far away."

"Who is Gale?"

"That's what I call the Air elemental."

His lips twitched. "I see."

Her back stiffened. "What?"

"No, it's… cute," he said.

Elsa decided not to be defensive and just agreed. "It is."

"Have you named the Nokk?"

She shook her head. "Should I?"

"I've met a couple," he said. "They usually have their own names. But they didn't appear as horses, to me."

Elsa leaned closer across the table. "What did they look like?"

"Men," Hikst said. "Playing violins and the like. They're usually good, but legend has it that bad ones may try to kidnap you. If you speak their name, that'll stop them."

"Maybe I should learn its name, then," she said thoughtfully.

"Maybe," he agreed. "Or toss a bit of steel at it, that'll chase it away."

"I just _tamed_ this one," she admitted.

"Well, you must have," he said with a little smile. "What else could we try?"

"Have you ever re-summoned Loki?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "I tried. Lots of times. It's never worked. And I've never had the opportunity to use an emerging volcano, again, so…"

"If he's the god of… what, chaos?" Elsa shook her head. "I'm a little fuzzy on the old gods."

"Mischief, tricks, knots and spiders," Hiksti mused. "A shape-shifter, a god, a gossip… all of these things. And more."

"So maybe you'll have to find an innovative way of summoning him, then."

Hiksti blinked at her. "Innovative?"

"Some sort of mischievous, new, tricky way of summoning."

"Hm. Religion and innovation don't often go hand-in-hand."

Else considered this, saw the sense in it, and nodded. "Let's try something… crazy," she suggested.

"I'll think about it," Hiksti said. "I'm pretty good at crazy."

"Are you?" Elsa asked curiously.

Hiksti just gave her a secretive little smile and changed the subject. "How old are you, your highness?"

"Twenty-four."

He nodded and dropped his eyes to his paper. Their list was very short and he sighed. "Well, let's start with the trolls, I suppose."

"Alright," Elsa said, slightly relieved that he hadn't suggested Ahtohallan first. "They're about a day and a half from here. We can ride the reindeer or take a sled."

"No horses for Your Highness?" he asked.

"Reindeer do better in the cold," she said, narrowing her eyes just a bit, fully aware that he was teasing her slightly.

"You don't have much of a sense of humor, do you?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, cool and haughty. "Of course I do. But I hardly know you, and in the short time we've been acquainted you've invaded my magical glacier, killed yourself, revived, and enlisted my help to remove your immortality curse. It's a bit much."

That set him back a bit, and he had the grace to look contrite. "Sorry," he said. "Sometimes I forget how to act around normal people." He paused. "Not that you're… _exactly_ normal. Being magic. And royal."

She had to admit he was right and nodded to one side. "Well, it's been a long day. The sun is down, and I'm tired. I'd like to retire for the night."

"Of course," he said, and stood up.

She stood, too, and he stepped out of her way so that she could pass him by and make for her room. He eyed the stiff set to her shoulders as she walked away. She paused at the door to her room and turned back to him. "Good night, Hiksti" she said, and nodded slightly.

He returned the nod. "Good night, my lady."

"You… can call me Elsa," she said softly.

"Elsa," he repeated. A ghost of a smile flickered over his mouth. "Good night."

She stepped into her room and closed the door.


	5. Chapter 5

I've had some really good suggestions from Anonymoos about possible cures for Hiksti's curse. Yay! Thank you! You're the very best! Thank you everyone who has reviewed, it's really inspired me to write more! If you'd like a reply to your review, please create a user ID, I like to send replies via Private Messaging on this site.

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They took the sled because it was easier to carry food and water that way. And though Elsa was a strong, independent woman, she wasn't someone who was used to doing without. She was royalty, after all. Even during the long and lonely years of her self-imposed isolation, she'd had maids and tutors and niceties and amenities.

Not that she'd ever told anyone, but… although her ice palace was beautiful it was utterly lacking in things like chairs, soft beds, running water, food of any kind… By the time Anna had found her she'd been really very hungry - she hadn't had much to eat the day of her coronation and there'd been no time to grab supplies when she ran away.

So food and water and extra blankets for her guest and a nice padded bench for the royal backside.

"We'll stop in Arendelle first," she explained to him while they headed south through the forest, along a well-trodden path. It was nearing the end of winter, but there was still plenty of snow on the ground. Hiksti hadn't made a single complaint about the cold and Elsa's opinion of him increased incrementally.

"You sister might be a bit surprised to meet me," he said. His eyes were constantly moving, scanning the trees around him. Gale was being playful today, and her ghostly giggles echoed around them while tendrils of breeze lifted their hair playfully. Elsa had spent a while this morning playing with her, and Hiksti had watched, looking rather entranced by the whole thing.

"Anna loves meeting new people," Elsa assured him. "She's a very welcoming and big-hearted person."

"An unusual quality in a monarch," he noted. "In my experience they tend to be one of two types of people. And warm and big-hearted isn't one."

"What two types are those?" she asked, her curiosity piqued.

"Bellicose and paranoid, or aloof and calculating."

"I wonder which I was," Elsa said drily.

"Oh, the second one, for sure," Hiksti answered, tossing her a grin. "Like a cat."

"A cat?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. She put the eyebrow down again, feeling all at once that it was an expression she'd been using rather a lot with him lately.

"Oh, a _big _cat," he hurriedly appended. "Like… a snow leopard."

"Mmhm."

"You know… shy and, uh, elusive. And deadly."

"Well, I suppose I could be compared to worse."

"Definitely," he chuckled.

"Anna's not calculating, cold, bellicose, _or_ paranoid. She's… interested and passionate and genuine." Hiksti tossed her a long look and she stared back at his wide green eyes, trying to read his expression. "What?" she asked.

"I've met a few rulers like that," he said slowly. "They tend to be brilliant… or get assassinated."

Elsa bristled. "No one would assassinate Anna."

"She's got guards?"

"Many," she retorted. "Well-trained and loyal."

He nodded and went back to looking at the scenery. "Brilliant, then. And does she have… council? Friends? Someone who can… help her work through any…" he seemed to grope for the right word. "... any concerns she has?"

"Are you implying that my sister may suffer from anxiety or something?" Elsa huffed. "You've never even met her. You are presumptuous."

"The ones who care usually do, though," he said. "Because they _care_, they _worry_. And not about themselves often enough."

"And just how many kings and queens have you met?"

He stared at her, and this time it was his turn to raise an eyebrow. "A lot." He tapped his chest. "Immortal. Old as Christ. Remember? Besides, that was the kind of chief I was - the kind who actually cared about his people and worried all the time."

"...right." Elsa looked at the reindeer trotting along in front of her, watched the hefty hindquarters bunching and swaying. "Okay, Ancient One, you've had a long time to figure it out, have you found the answer? To life, the universe, everything?"

"Pft," he said, waving a hand as if to dismiss something trivial. "Love, obviously."

"Love?" She grinned at him. "That's the point of life? The purpose? I didn't take you for a romantic."

"First of all, I'm extremely romantic, when I need to be," he retorted with good humor. "Secondly… honestly, most life doesn't _have_ a point," he said. "I mean, life just… happens. And animals, they feel, they live, they die - usually horribly. People are the same. But people get to make decisions that animals don't get to make. We get to plan. We get to build relationships. For a sociable group of beings like humans, relationships matter. And the most sacred relationships are based on love. So… we chose to live governed by fear, or in service of love."

"In… service? Of love?" Elsa tilted her head to one side a bit.

"More specifically, in service to those whom we love."

"That makes it sound like love is slavery."

"No," he said, lifting his eyes to hers. "Love is sacrifice."

His words send a jolt through her. She couldn't look away, though his gaze was making her uncomfortable somehow. Elsa's mind flashed to that moment a few years ago on the fjord, Anna frozen solid with her hand upraised to protect her from Hans' sword. And though she hadn't seen it, she _had _heard it described; how Anna had placed herself on that dam and goaded the Earth giants into destroying it, willing to surrender her own life to break the curse and in doing so saving Elsa again. And all those years of turning Anna away, closing the door between them, had been her own way of giving up her own happiness for her beloved sister's safety. "Sacrifice," she said, rolling the idea around her mouth and her mind and finding that it fit well. "That sounds right."

He nodded and broke their eye contact.

They rode in silence for hours after that, stopping only to eat and find a convenient bush, until at last they could see Arendelle. The castle caught the late afternoon light, and out of habit Elsa counted the ships in the harbor - nine - and scanned what she could see to make sure that everything was as it should be. It was.

"It's a pretty castle," Hiksti said. "Strategically built, not too hard to defend from a ground invasion. I suppose with invading warships you could just freeze them as they approached. But you'd be very vulnerable to an aerial attack."

"From what?" she asked. "As far as I know, soldiers can't fly."

He shook his head. "Yeah, of course not. Sorry. Still a habit, after all these years."

Elsa blinked at him, glanced at his leg, recalled what he'd told her about losing it. "You're thinking of dragon attacks?"

He gave her a sheepish grin. "Yeah."

"You've got to tell me about that, some day," she said, honestly having forgotten about it until just now. She snapped the reins and took them to her childhood home.

By the time they reached the gates, they were open, and Queen Anna of Arendelle was running toward them, her steps practically bouncing. "Elsa!" she shouted. "I wasn't expecting you for a few - hello." She skidded to a stop next to the sled, slender pink hands clutching the top of the sled and peering at Hiksti with wide blue eyes. "Who are you?"

"Anna," said Elsa, descending from the sled as regally as one could. She felt it important to model this kind of reserved motion around her sister, who really could use a few lessons in comportment, now that she was running the country. "This is Hiksti, I met him up north. I've agreed to help him."

Hiksti clambered down from the sled, himself, taking in the very large blonde man who had trailed the queen out of the castle and was just now joining them. The man's body-language was cautious and protective of the queen all at once, and he placed a large hand lightly on her shoulder for a moment, squeezed it, and let her go. "Hello," Hiksti said. "Pleased to meet you all." He sketched a respectful bow. "Your majesty."

"Hi, again!" Anna chirruped. "What do you need help with? Is it your leg? Do you need a new one? I'm sure I could get the physician to take a look at it."

Hiksti opened up his mouth to reply when Elsa cut in. "No, that's not it. Let's go inside, and we can talk about it there." She didn't even try to hide her smile when Anna attached herself to her arm and the two ladies swept up the walk, leaving Hiksti and the tall blonde to follow them. Grooms approached from one side to take care of the reindeer.

"Hi," Hiksti said again. "Hiksti." He held out his hand.

"Kristoff," said the man, taking the offered hand and squeezing it - but not too hard. "Your name means… hiccup?"

"You speak Old Norse?" Hiksti asked, just a bit surprised. They unclasped hands and started walking.

"A little bit," Kristoff said. "A few words and phrases."

"Ah, good."

"So… how'd you meet Elsa?"

"Oh, I went looking for her," Hiksti admitted. "I need her help with something. And you?"

"I was helping Anna," Kristoff said. "We sort of met in her ice palace on the north mountain."

"We passed that on the way here," Hiksti noted. "Really, truly breathtaking."

"Isn't it?" Kristoff said, smiling widely. "So… how'd you lose your leg?"

"An accident involving dragons."

Kristoff chuckled. "Okay, don't tell me."

"I just did!" Hiksti said, smiling like he had a secret.

It was a few short minutes until the four of them were cloistered together in a small parlor. Hiksti settled himself on one side of a comfortable couch, careful to keep his posture nice until he realized that the other three weren't too fussed about it. The queen and Kristoff sat on a loveseat together, practically touching knees, and Elsa perched on an overstuffed armchair. "Where's Olaf?" she asked.

Queen Anna shrugged. "I'm not sure. Last I heard he was in the library for his reading lesson."

Elsa's lips twitched into a warm, maternal smile. "I suppose he'll find us soon enough."

"Who's Olaf?" Hiksti asked.

As if the question summoned him, the door burst open and a small, living snowman waddled into the room. "Hi! I'm Olaf!" it said to Hiksti.

Hiksti was very, very old, and he had seen quite a lot during his long life, but even a talking snowman will give one a start, and before anyone could blink he was already balanced on the back of the couch with a dagger in his hand. "Odin's beard!" he cursed, a bit wide-eyed.

"Calm down!" Anna said, jumping up, too, and extending placating hands in his direction. "This is Olaf," she said, sounding like she was talking to a small child. "He's a good little snowman, and our true friend."

Kristoff wasn't about to sit still while his love put herself between a man with a knife and Olaf. He grabbed the redhead around her waist and spun her away, interposing his own body between her and Hiksti. "How dare you pull a knife!" he bellowed.

"Stop at once!" Elsa commanded.

And everyone did.

"Sorry if I startled you," Olaf told Hiksti contritely. "I tend to do that, sometimes. I didn't mean to. Let's start again!" He spoke slowly. "Hello, strange man, my name is Olaf, and I am _perfectly harmless_." He smiled disarmingly and stuck out his stick-hand. "Pleased to meet you."

Everybody stared at Hiksti, who glanced first at Elsa, who nodded at him, then he slowly put away the knife into his boot. He stepped from the back of the couch to the seat to the floor with a lanky sort of grace, and bent slightly to take the stick hand into his own. They shook. "Hello, Olaf. I'm Hiksti. Sorry for the… reaction. Pleased to meet you."

"There, that's better," Olaf said. He clambered up onto the couch to sit on the other side from Hiksti and everyone took a collective breath and settled once again onto the couches.

"Any other surprises I should know about?" Hiksti asked Elsa, his tone dry.

"No, I think that's all."

"Okay, great, now tell me what's going on!" Anna said impatiently. "Who is this man you've brought home, how and why are you helping him, and is he single?"

"What?" Elsa asked her sister, doing a double-take.

Hiksti laughed and Kristoff ruffled his own hair, looking a bit embarrassed. "Maybe I should explain," Hiksti said.

"From the beginning," Anna insisted.

"Alright, from the beginning," he agreed.


	6. Chapter 6

"I was born on a little island not too far from here," Hiksti said. "Part of an archipelago. You three probably won't believe me when I tell you that I was born around the year 1 of the Christian calendar."

"You're right," Kristoff scoffed. "I don't believe you."

"You look great for such an ancient person," Olaf said.

"Do you follow a beauty routine?" Anna quipped.

"I believe him," Elsa stated, and that stopped the banter cold.

"Why?" Anna asked her sister.

Elsa looked to Hiksti, who nodded. She turned her gaze back to her sister. "Because he gave me some proof as to his immortality. And it was… _very_ believable. Trust me."

"I do," Anna said immediately, and Kristoff nodded staunchly. And that was that. Then they all stared at Hiksti again, and this time there was an awed wariness to their gazes. It's not every day that you met an immortal.

"Alright, continuing," Hiksti said, ignoring the looks. "Back then, dragons were real. And the people of my tribe were pretty terrified of them. Our entire society was built around killing them and protecting our islands. To become a man, you had to kill a dragon. I was told that my mother had been carried off and eaten, so I was into the hype, too. Right until I shot one down.

"A Night Fury, that's the kind of dragon he was. I hadn't killed him, but I'd injured him. And when I saw him, when I looked into his eyes, he didn't seem like a cold-blooded Viking killer to me, he seemed… like a person. I got to know him, named him - uh, let me translate - Toothless, and eventually built a replacement for the tail fin I'd ripped off. I learned to ride him. Then… well, a lot of stuff happened. I lost my leg, for one. My people accepted the dragons, even learned to live with them. Soon enough everyone had a dragon to ride. It was great! Until eventually the outside world wouldn't leave well enough alone and all the dragons had to hide away just to survive. Toothless started a family, and I got married to the girl of my dreams and had a family, too."

He paused and took a deep breath.

"Some idiot friends of mine summoned Loki, and I took responsibility so that he wouldn't kill them. Only he cursed me, instead, and now I can't die. I outlived my wife and children and grandchildren and… I went to live with the dragons for a while. For a long while. Two and a half hundred years, I think? About that. I left when Toothless finally died, too." His voice hitched a bit and he had to stop and clear his throat. "I spent a while trying to summon Loki, unsuccessfully. Tried to kill myself a few dozen times and when that didn't work I just traveled around for a few centuries. I went back after a while, to the dragon's secret world, but… it was gone. They were gone. Now they're only legends. And a legend eventually led me here, to Elsa. My hope is that she can lift the curse from me, give me the chance to…" he paused a second and looked at her. "A chance to live a normal life and die a normal death, as a wrinkled old man. So that's it, in a nutshell."

"I have so many questions," Kristoff said.

"Well, I've got all the time in the world to answer them," Hiksti replied.

"There was more than one kind of dragon? And they didn't want to eat people? And you _rode_ them? You flew? In the air? _On a dragon_?!"

"Yes," Hiksti answered. "Usually not. I did, yes, yeah. And yes."

"Whoa," Kristoff sighed, his eyes wide and jaw slack.

"Did you ever get married after your wife died?" Anna asked.

Hiksti's eyes shuttered and he looked away. "No," he told her quietly.

"Anna," Elsa said. "He must still miss her."

"But… after eighteen-hundred years? That's… that's…" The redhead trailed off, at a loss for words.

"Loyalty," Olaf said. "True love. Oh! It hurts me right here." He laid his little hand next to his top coal button. "Why does that hurt me?"

"Because you're realizing that he's been alone for all this time," Elsa said. "And you're too kind not empathize with that."

"That's exactly it," Olaf said, nodding. "You're so wise, Elsa. Thank you."

Hiksti shook his head a bit. "It's not that I miss her," he said slowly, and everyone stopped talking to listen. "It's been a long time, true. A very, very long time. I remember her, and I still love her, but… I had to give up _missing _her more than a millennium ago. She wouldn't have wanted me to mope around the world after she died."

"Then why?" Anna asked.

Elsa looked at their guest intently, craving the answer at least as much as her sister.

"Because what's the point in falling in love with someone if they're just going to die on me before I've blinked?" he asked softly. "Why would I want to put myself through that kind of pain again?" He shook his head. "And as we all know, the natural consequence of marriage is children… I can't… I can't outlive my children, again. I won't. Something like that just… breaks you."

Anna and Kristoff wore twin expressions of horror at the thought of that, and she literally turned to him and clutched his arm. He put a comforting hand over hers and they shared a long look.

"That hurts me even _more_!" Olaf wailed. He launched himself across the couch at Hiksti and hugged him fiercely. "You poor, strange, very very _old_ lonely man!"

Awkwardly, Hiksti patted Olaf's back. "There, there," he murmured.

Elsa crossed to the couch and gently pried her creation away from Hiksti. "It'll be okay, Olaf," she told him. "I'm going to try to help Hiksti."

"So he can grow old and die like a normal person?" he asked.

"Yes," she promised.

"And maybe then," said the snowman, looking up at the immortal, "You can get married again and have children again, and this time you'll all grow older at the same time and it'll be _better_."

Hiksti paused for a second, clearly unsure as to what he could say in response to that. "I… hadn't thought about it," he admitted.

Olaf continued to look to Hiksti with wide eyes. "Wow, you really should." He propped his chin on his hand. "You know," he said conversationally, "I died once. It wasn't bad. Just sad, for a little bit. And then Elsa brought me back and that was great! And life is good!"

"We'll help you," Anna said. "I promise. And I'm the queen, so that counts for something."

"Of course we will," Kristoff agreed. "Have you spoken to the trolls?"

"That's where we're going," Elsa said. "I thought we could spend the night here and go first thing in the morning."

"Great idea!" Anna enthused. "Let's have a nice dinner and get to know each other more and maybe play a game. Do you like games, Hiksti?"

"Sure," he agreed easily enough. "But not chess."

"You don't like chess?" Kristoff asked.

"No, I love it. But I will absolutely annihilate you, and I'd rather not reduce my gracious hosts to tears."

"Oh, it is so on," Anna said, cracking her knuckles.

"No, really," Hiksti said gently. "I've played a lot of chess in the last fifteen hundred years. You really, really don't want to play me."

Anna opened her mouth to protest but Kristoff laid a hand on her shoulder and she subsided. "Okay, fine. We'll think of something else, then."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Dinner was good and rich and filling and they had some nice conversation. Hiksti got to know each of them a bit more, and it was very evident to both ladies that Kristoff had developed a strong hero-worshiping sort of crush on Hiksti, who handled the other man's admiration with minimum of fuss and a good dollop of graciousness.

After dinner they played the Minister's Cat, and then Kaiser, and Hiksti did some advanced card tricks for them. Kristoff pulled out his lute and sang a silly song, and then Anna joined him in a duet, and Hiksti told them no one wanted to hear him sing.

"Oh, c'mon!" Anna cajoled. "Just one little song!"

"No, I promise I'm terrible. There are some things you just have to be born with, and a good singing voice was _not_ in the cards for me." Hiksti grinned but shook his head.

"Fine," Anna sighed dramatically.

Then Kristoff struck up the sweet, plaintive notes to a folk song called Mín Móðir, and Elsa sang.  
(You Tube dot com /watch?v=zm3wa2LtJQM)

Olaf and Anna and Kristoff were familiar with her voice, because even as serious and responsible as she'd been, a happy Elsa was an Elsa who sang. But this was Hiksti's first time hearing it, and when the first few notes poured out of her mouth he actually stood on his feet, every line of his body listening to her. She almost faltered at the attention, but put some iron into her spine and got through it.

She finished and Anna and Kristoff and Olaf applauded and cheered and whistled. She blushed and smiled and chuckled at the accolades, and glanced at Hiksti, whose expression was inscrutable. Finally she tucked a bit of hair behind her ear and decided to just ask him. "Did you like it?"

"Oh, yes," he said. He stayed exactly where he was, but somehow, to Elsa, it felt like he was taking up all the space in the room, as if everyone else but the two of them were gone. "You were amazing. I've rarely heard a voice that… perfect."

Elsa's blush returned twofold but she didn't duck her head. She knew she was a good singer. "Thank you," she said simply.

"Feel free to sing around me any time you want," he said.

"I'll take you up on that," she laughed.

They stared at one another for a few more moments, and suddenly Elsa realized that there was silence in the room. She turned to see that her sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law and her magical creation were all staring at them with wide eyes and knowing smiles, though Anna's was bittersweet. Hiksti was a beat slower to look away from her and toward their audience.

"What?" Elsa asked.

"Nothing!" Anna said quickly. "My, look at the time! We'd better all get to sleep if you want to wake up early to see the trolls tomorrow." She tugged Kristoff by the hand out of the door. "Olaf, c'mon!"

"Yes, my radiant queen!" the little snowman said. "Good night, Elsa. Good night, Hiksti. Sweet dreams!"

There was silence between them after the others left, until Hiksti grinned at her. "I'm pretty sure they think there's something going on with us."

Elsa scoffed. "Ridiculous."

"Obviously. I mean, could you even imagine?" he asked.

"Me and you?" she said. "I don't see it happening."

"I'm _way_ too old for you," he said. "And there's the possibility of, you know, not breaking the curse."

"Oh, we'll break it," she promised. "But Anna's just taking a flight of fancy and Kristoff, as usual, has come along for the ride," she said. "And you really are rather old. I'm pretty sure there's a law against robbing the cradle."

They laughed together again. "Well, then that's settled," he said. "But she's right, we should sleep. Do you know where…?"

"Oh, the footman will show you," Elsa said quickly. She led him into the hallway and the promised footman was waiting patiently by the door.

"Alright, thanks," Hiksti said. There was an awkward pause while he looked at her and she couldn't bring herself to look away for some reason. He raised a hand to the back of his head and ruffled his own hair. "Good night, Elsa."

"Good night, Hiksti," she murmured, tightening her clasped hands until her knuckles were white. "I'll see you in the morning."

That night Elsa dreamed of taking flight on a dragon's back and soaring over an endless sapphire sea. Hiksti's laughing, wide green eyes were with her, and a song of triumph and bittersweet poured from her throat.


	7. Chapter 7

The queen usually slept in, but today she was up with the sun and it was all her maids could do to keep up with her energy and get her dressed and presentable before she bounded through the halls to the breakfast room.

"Good morning, everyone!" she warbled, hooking an elbow around a slender pillar near the door and using it to change her momentum and swing around, only to launch herself into Kristoff's waiting arms.

The big man oofed at the impact of his fiance and they kissed, laughing together. "Oh, they're not down, yet?" Anna asked him.

"Not yet," he said, pulling her closer. "But while we wait, maybe we can…" he bent his head to capture her lips again and she giggled and twined her arms around his neck. They were both fully aware of the butler standing unobtrusively next to the servant's door, waiting to fetch anything they required… and serving as a chaperone. After all, they weren't married _yet_. But just because they weren't allowed to be alone together yet didn't mean they couldn't get in a few kisses.

They were both flushed and grinning by the time Elsa joined them. The Snow Queen stopped in her tracks, staring at the two of them pressed together like bookends. "Oh!" she exclaimed, turning red and bringing a hand to her heart. "I'm… well… sorry. Good, uh, morning."

"Sorry!" Anna said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. She peeled herself off of Kristoff and brushed a hand down the front of her skirt, raised the other to pat at her hair. Her efforts weren't really needed, because Kristoff, though brought up by trolls, was a perfect gentleman and hadn't mussed her hair or her clothes during their makeout session. A fact that the redhead found a tad frustrating, actually. She gave her sister an unabashed grin and sat herself down, then bounced right back up and took the seat at the head of the table. Because that was her place now, even if she did forget, sometimes.

Kristoff sat down to her right and Elsa took the seat to her left, leaving the final seat at the foot of the table open for Hiksti when he arrived.

Elsa's cheeks were rather pink and she couldn't meet Kristoff's eyes. "So, how are you this morning?" she asked Anna.

"I'm fantastic," Anna said, sending a flirtatious glance at Kristoff. "You know, Elsa, you've really got to find someone to try this whole kissing thing, with. It's _amazing_." She propped her chin on her hand and fluttered her eyelashes at her man.

The man in question looked both smug and embarrassed at the same time. "Anna," he begged. "You're making me blush."

"I like it when you blush," she murmured to him.

Elsa cleared her throat. "I don't think now is the time," she gently chided.

Anna's bright blue eyes turned to her sister and she grinned again. "Oh, you'll see. Someday, when you fall in love, it'll seem like every time is kissing time. When you finally kiss someone you have to tell me _all about it_, okay?" Her smile turned teasing. "Maybe you should kiss that handsome Hiksti. I bet he's a good kisser, I mean… he's had a lot of time to perfect it."

Kristoff nodded in agreement like this was, of course, the way things would be.

Elsa turned red and picked up her tea and took a sip, looking away from the pair of them to see that Hiksti was standing in the doorway, a rather awkward look on his face. She almost spat out the tea, but managed to recover. "Hiksti," she choked. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough," he said slowly, his eyes travelling over her face. "You okay?"

"Fine," she said tightly. She carefully set down her teacup, which was now frozen solid, onto the frost-covered tablecloth.

Anna looked contrite and reached a hand across the table to grab Elsa's hand. "I'm sorry for teasing you," she said. Elsa almost managed to snatch her hand away, an old reflex, but Anna clung tightly. "Forgive me?"

Elsa took a slow, deep breath, focused on the warm fingers clutching her, and the ice faded away. "Forgiven," she said. "Let's eat, shall we?"

The butler waited for Anna's nod before signalling for the food to be brought in. The rest of breakfast was a planning session for their trip to the trolls, which was fairly simple and straightforward.

What wasn't so simple or straightforward was the look that Hiksti kept casting to Elsa, an almost indecipherable furrow of his brow, a slight squinting of his eyes, a downturn to the corners of his mouth, a thoughtful tilt to his head. She couldn't figure out what he was thinking. When they left the breakfast room to change into travelling clothes he loped ahead and she didn't get to ask him about it.

Sven was a rather magnificent reindeer, about as personable and gregarious an animal as Hiksti had ever seen, and he spent a minute complimenting him, much to Kristoff's joy. A happy Kristoff made for a happy Anna, and that, in turn, made Elsa happy, too. Her opinion of him went up a notch. Finally they all got aboard the sled and began their journey, which wouldn't be more than a couple of hours.

"Okay, so what do you think about the title 'king consort'?" Anna asked Kristoff when they'd been on the road for about fifteen minutes. She and her fiance were riding in the front of the sled, while Elsa and Hiksti were comfortably ensconced in the back amidst lunch and snacks and blankets. Elsa's ears perked up and she met Hiksti's amused eyes.

"King consort?" Kristoff repeated. "Ugh. No. Why do I need a title, anyway?"

"Because I'm the queen, and you'll be my husband, and we have to call you something."

"Okay, how about Her Majesty's Dearest Snookums?"

Anna's laughter rang out. "I'm the only one who can call you that!"

"Obviously," he answered easily. "Okay, uh, Sir Kristoff the Amazing Eternal Bosom of Loooooove?"

Now all four of them were cracking up.

"Wait, wait," Anna said, wiping away a tear. "Kristoff, the Queen's Comely Companion and Contractual Concomitant!"

"What does that even mean?" Kristoff howled, tears of mirth squeezing out of his eyes.

"The Royal Baby Begetter!" Hiksti suggested.

"Now that's a job I can get behind!" Kristoff laughed.

"Not for another six months!" Elsa giggled, and they all laughed some more.

Elsa liked laughing with her sister and her future brother-in-law. She liked seeing Hiksti laughing, too. She liked the way his green eyes sparkled and she thought, with a funny little flip in her stomach, that he liked to see her laugh, as well. And then something inside her stomach twisted harder and tugged and her laughter ebbed and she was just staring at him, and she didn't understand why she couldn't look away.

"But seriously," Anna said after she'd regained her composure. "Prince consort?"

Hiksti glanced away from her and the spell was broken. Elsa pressed a fist to her stomach and looked down at her knees, feeling confused and angry at Hiksti because he was the source of this strange confusion and she was beginning to wonder if he had some sort of spell on her.

"I just never imagined I'd be royalty," Kristoff complained. "That's kind of a lot for an orphan ice-harvester."

"Well, it comes with marrying me," Anna told him pertly. "So deal with it."

"I'd like to walk," Elsa announced suddenly. "Stretch my legs." And get away from Hiksti.

"Oh, let me stop Sven," Kristoff said, reaching for the reins.

"No need!" Elsa cried, and leaped down unaided. She strode next to the sled, determined to walk it off, whatever it was, this strange and un-looked-for feeling that was turning her inside out. She put some vigor into her steps, resolved to outpace the sled and lead them, and get some space to clear her head. She'd made it about ten feet in front of Sven before she realized that Hiksti had joined her.

"Are you okay?" he asked in a low voice. They were just far enough from Anna and Kristoff that the duo couldn't hear them if they spoke quietly.

"I'm fine," Elsa snapped. She was feeling put out that Hiksti had followed her.

"I only ask because…" he gestured up, and Elsa looked up to see that she had her own personal flurry.

That irritated her, and she took a deep breath and willed it away. "I'm fine," she said again more steadily.

"Alright." Hiksti's voice was measured. He kept pace with her pretty easily, having a longer stride. The loose-hipped way he walked seemed infuriatingly efficient and for some reason it made Elsa want to punch him. But she didn't. She reminded herself that should she choose to give vent to the violent urge she may very well kill him, and she did _not_ want to be a murderer. Even if he would come back to life.

"What _is_ it about you?" she hissed.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked.

"You and your… stares. What's going on?"

"I'm, uh, not sure what you mean?" he said. She shot him a glance and saw that he looked confused.

"Like this morning. At breakfast. You keep looking at me, looking… I don't even know what. What were you thinking?" She didn't like not being able to read people. Not that she'd ever had much practice.

"Oh, that," he said. He gave an embarrassed half-cough. "That's nothing, really."

"What was it?" she pressed.

He pressed his lips together.

"Tell me," she demanded.

"Fine. If you must know, I was wondering why you'd never kissed anyone. You're a healthy, beautiful young woman, there must have been no end of young men head over heels in love with you. I just couldn't figure it out."

Elsa turned an incredulous stare at him. "What?"

"I mean, not even as a teenager? No stolen kisses with the stable boy? No furtive flirtations with a footman? Nothing? Whyever not?"

She sputtered for a moment. "I don't have to explain myself to you."

"You don't," he agreed. "Which is why I didn't ask at the time. And wouldn't have, except you made me. So."

"So," she repeated. They continued along the trail for a few more minutes (she stomping, he striding) while she debated whether or not to answer. Finally, though, she figured that turnabout was fair play and he'd already told her a lot about himself.

"I was a very isolated child," she said softly. "Because of my power. When… when I was eight years old I almost killed Anna by accident, and it frightened me. I closed myself off from everyone, so I wouldn't hurt them."

Hiksti was silent, just listening.

"I stayed mostly in my rooms. I ate alone, dressed myself. The maids came to clean and collect laundry and bedding, I had a tutor of course… and they all knew my secret. But Anna didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"When I hurt Anna, my magic hit her head. It turned a lock of her hair white and knocked her unconscious. My father and mother gathered us up and we went to the trolls for help. Their elder healed her by changing her memories - he took away all memory of my magic. He said that there was beauty in my power, but great danger, too. He told me I had to learn to control it, and that fear would be my enemy." She sighed. "After that my father limited the staff. We closed the gates. They hid me away. And _I_ hid me away. I tried to learn to control it, but…" she shook her head. "I was only a child."

Hiksti's chin thrust forward and his eyes were stormy. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. He looked… dangerous. "They failed you," he clipped out.

"I know that now," she said sadly. "They didn't mean to. None of us understood."

"So that's why," he muttered. His voice had dropped and roughened, tinged with a darkness that send a shiver up her spine. She knew that darkness, having felt it in herself.

"That's why," she agreed. "I always knew, as an abstract fact, that as queen I would be required to marry and produce and heir someday, but…" she shrugged. "It wasn't something I'd given serious thought to. And now I don't need to, which is honestly a relief."

"Yeah, been there," he mumbled.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I… well. I was the son of the chief," he admitted. "One day to be chief, myself. And eventually I was. I was lucky enough to marry Ástríðr for love, but if it hadn't been her it would have _had_ to have been someone. A lot of the elders thought I took too long to tie the knot as it is."

"Honestly, not everyone was happy about Anna's choice," Elsa admitted. "They would have preferred she marry a prince, brought us some political alliance. But…" she shrugged one slender shoulder. "Love wins. And one of these days someone's going to mention to Kristoff that he's a duke."

Hiksti shot her an amused look. "You made him a duke?" he asked.

"Right before I abdicated," she said quietly. "My last official act." She chuckled. "He's a hero, after all. Duke Kristoff."

Hiksti shared her chuckle. "Oh, you're good."

"I know," she said smugly.

"So… you spent most of your life suppressing your emotions out of fear of harming others?" he tried to clarify.

"...yes," she agreed.

"And… that backfired, obviously. And so how did you end up resolving the issue?"

She smiled to herself. "Love," she said simply. "It's like you said… love is sacrifice. Anna proved that, she - she risked her life to save me. Even after all those years of me shutting the door in her face." She felt her breath catch and she worked for a moment to collect herself. "Her act of true love thawed my frozen heart. She taught me that opening myself up to love, giving love, was the answer to controlling my powers." Idly she scattered snowflakes before her, letting them whirl into capricious shapes of their own accord. They became two sisters hugging, holding hands, running together, before dissipating.

"That's beautiful," Hiksti said. But he wasn't looking at her flurries. His eyes were filled with kindness and trained on her face.

She blushed and turned away. "What if the answer to your curse is love?" she asked.

He snorted. "Then I'm out of luck," he said. "Aren't I? Everyone I ever loved has been dead for so… so long."

She almost reached for him. Almost. Her hand twitched and traveled half the distance to his arm but she stopped herself and tucked it away again beneath her cape. "Well, let's hope it's something else, then," she said.

"Hope seems to be all I've got these days," he told her gravely.

"Don't worry," she said, her voice soft but determined. "I've got you."


	8. Chapter 8

When they arrived at Troll Valley Anna and Kristoff hopped out of the cart to join the other two. "Hello!" Kristoff called. "Cliff? Bulda! Come out and meet my new friend, Hiksti!"

The trolls rolled toward them with an earthy rumble and sprang upright with cries of welcome and fast-coming comments about Hiksti's looks. Nothing was left out, from his freckles and brownish hair to his artificial leg and choice of wardrobe.

But Grand Pabbie approached slowly, his eyes wide as he took in the man. "Is it really you?" he asked. "But that's impossible."

Hiksti froze, looking down at the troll in wonder. "Pabbie?" he asked. He knelt down and Grand Pabbie came close.

"How can this be?" the troll asked. Everyone else had quieted and watched with interest. "You and I last parted ways… six hundred years ago. I was a child, then."

"Yeah, I… I'm immortal," Hiksti said. "I didn't realize that trolls lived for so long." His eyes searched the troll's granite face. "You look good."

"I look old," Grand Pabbie replied sadly. "And you don't. How sad for you. I understand, now, why you left. And is that why you're here, now?"

Hiksti nodded. "I'd like to break my curse."

"Yes," Grand Pabbie sighed. "May I?" he held his hand close to Hiksti's face, and the man nodded. Gently, Grand Pabbie touched his forehead, and a subtle green glow formed there. "Wait -" was all he got out before he cried in alarm and pulled back his hand as if burned. "You're not just cursed," he said, shaking his hand and wincing. "You're god-touched."

"Are you alright?" Hiksti asked in alarm.

"Yes, yes, fine. But I can't look as closely as I wanted to." He sighed. "Your memories are weighty, Hiksti. Like a rockslide."

Hiksti's shoulders slumped. "You're saying you can't help me?"

Grand Pabbie turned away and walked a few steps, thinking hard. "I didn't say that, exactly… let me think on this."

"Take all the time you need," Hiksti said wryly. "I'm not going anywhere."

Several hours later saw Kristoff and Anna visiting with Bulda and the baby trolls and excitedly talking about their wedding planning, while Elsa and Hiksti sat awkwardly near each other around a small, warm fire. Grand Pabbie had been alone in the woods for the entire time.

"Do you think he'll be able to help?" Hiksti asked her. He held his hands out to the fire and Elsa watched the play of light along his palms, subtle compared to the rays of the sun slanting down on them.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Kristoff has a lot of faith in them. They raised him, though, so he might be biased."

Hiksti nodded. His face was blank and his eyes, though staring at the fire, were far away.

A lullaby came to her and before she knew it, she started singing softly for him.  
Youtube dot com /watch?v=_yQpU_73Dv0&list=PLMTXJqL1DsqOdQRVIA6U_lZxAgkiE9hjU&index=1

_Lay down your head and I'll sing you a lullaby_

_Back to the years of loo-li lai-lay_

_And I'll sing you to sleep and I'll sing you tomorrow_

_Bless you with love for the road that you go_

He lifted his head and now his eyes weren't far away at all, but here, and looking at her. They were so very, very green, so intelligent, and in their depths Elsa saw a faltering warrior. She poured a gentle strength into her voice, willed the strength into him.

_May you sail fair to the far fields of fortune_

_With diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet_

_And may you need never to banish misfortune_

_May you find kindness in all that you meet_

She gracefully stood and gestured, and snow and mist appeared, creating the image she sang. Hiksti on a Viking longship under full sail, a crown on his brow, shining with light. His hand was outstretched, and kindness shone from his face.

The real Hiksti stood up, his eyes upturned to the display, wonder on his face.

_May there always be angels to watch over you_

_To guide you each step of the way_

_To guard you and keep you safe from all harm_

_Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay_

The ship landed and the image of the Viking disembarked. Angels beckoned him, looking as Elsa imagined Valkyries looked, fierce winged women warriors, armed with spears and round shields.

_May you bring love and may you bring happiness_

_Be loved in return to the end of your days_

_Now fall off to sleep, I'm not meaning to keep you_

_I'll just sit for a while and sing loo-li, lai-lay_

But one of the maidens… Elsa gave her a familiar face that she'd seen in a drawing once, with a thick braid and fur about her shoulders. The snowy image opened her arms and the misty Hiksti stepped into them.

The flesh-and-blood man watching caught a sob in his throat and tears rose in his eye. He bit his lip.

_May there always be angels to watch over you_

_To guide you each step of the way_

_To guard you and keep you safe from all harm_

_Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay_

_Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay…_

Gently, snow-Hiksti and his shield maiden and their Valkyries ascended toward the heavens, growing brighter and more tenuous as they rose, until finally in a gentle flash they dissipated entirely, snowing down upon Elsa and Hiksti in a silent flurry.

"I'm sorry," Elsa said. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I was just trying to... give you..." a gift, comfort, solace. The words hovered at the tip of her tongue but refused to be said.

"No, that's…" Hiksti swallowed and shook his head. Then his arm shot out and he wrapped it around Elsa's shoulders. Before she could even so much as stiffen he'd hauled her up against him and buried his face in her hair. "Thank you," he said, and then ended the brief hug as quickly as he'd began it. "It was a beautiful song. And a beautiful sentiment. Thank you." He started roughly wiping away his tears on his sleeve, until Elsa, still mentally reeling from the embrace, handed him a handkerchief.

"That's the answer," came the grave voice of Grand Pabbie.

They turned to see the old troll emerging from the woods. "What is?" Elsa asked.

"Selflessness," he said. "Love. Sacrifice. I'm not sure how it's the answer, but… it is. And you two must walk the path to the answer together. Of that I am certain. Somehow I understand that the journey you will undertake together is just as important as the final destination."

"But _where _are we supposed to go?" Hiksti asked, a tinge of impatience in his voice.

"You already have the answer to that," Grand Pabbie said seriously.

"But we don't," Elsa contradicted him. "That's why we came here."

Grand Pabbie lifted his hands helplessly. "I'm sorry, that's the best I can offer."

"Well that's disappointing," Anna said, and Elsa jumped, having quite forgotten that her sister had been there the whole time.

Kristoff nudged his beloved with his elbow - gently - and then shrugged. "It wouldn't be an adventure if you were told right at the beginning exactly how to solve it."

"I've had enough of adventures," Elsa said, not even knowing if she meant it, and at the same time Hikst exclaimed, "I can do without another one, thanks." They glanced at one another and grinned a little.

"Okay, see, this is why -" Anna started, but Kristoff waved a big mittened hand in front of her face frantically and bent to whisper in her ear.

"I know, but -" she started, only to be stopped by his whispering again. She glared at him. Then crossed her arms. "Fine."

"What… just happened?" Elsa asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

"Nothing," Anna bit out. "Just… ugh." She shook her head and looked at Kristoff one last time, then forced a brightness to her tone. "Let's go home! I have a ton of paperwork to do. The kingdom doesn't run itself, you know!"

"Oh, I know," Elsa told her. The two sisters made for the sled and Kristoff and Hiksti had no choice but to follow. Kristoff did, of course, stop to give his troll family and friends hugs and kisses, first. Hiksti hitched Sven to the sled while his new friend bid them farewell, and soon enough they were on the road again, back to the castle.

The ride was mostly silent, and half-way there they stopped at a breathtaking overlook to eat their lunch.

"So, I have a question," Kristoff said.

"Hm?" Hiksti hummed around a mouthful of sandwich.

"You've tried to summon Loki again?"

Hiksti nodded.

"And he never came?"

Hiksti nodded again.

"Did you maybe try going to him?"

Hiksti stared at him.

"How can he do that, though?" Anna asked. "Don't gods live in the heavens?"

They all stared at Hiksti, who swallowed his food. "Maybe not Loki," he answered slowly. "He's actually chained up in a cave somewhere, bound by his son's entrails, being tortured with snake venom and tended to by Sigyn, his wife."

Anna gagged and Kristoff looked put off, and Elsa actually put her sandwich down. "Gross," said the Queen of Arendelle.

"Sorry," Hiksti said. He apparently wasn't grossed out and took another bite. After chewing thoughtfully he spoke again. "The stories aren't super specific about where the cave is. It could be anywhere on Earth… or in the heavens. And of course I can't get to the heavens because I _can't die_. So I never considered going to him."

"So how are we going to find this cave?" Anna asked, picking at the crust on her bread.

"We?" Hiksti asked.

"Obviously," she said, and Elsa cut in. "Anna, no. You can't come."

"You always say that," Anna replied. "And then I end up saving your life. Twice, now. So… really, stop trying to leave without me, that's not how we roll."

Elsa sighed. "Let's just figure out where it is, first."

"And maybe we could wait until after the wedding?" Kristoff suggested. "Because, you know. Getting married, and all."

"Of course, sweetie," Anna told him, laying a hand on his knee.

They finished their lunch while Anna and Kristoff debated over wedding details. Elsa took in the sight of the valley spreading out below them, all the trees and land clothed in winter white, sparkling in the afternoon sun. They could see the castle from here, its soaring spires standing out against the dark blue waters of the fjord. After they packed everything up Hiksti gave them all a grin. "Well, this looks like a great place to fly from, and the wind is perfect for it. I'll meet you back at the castle?"

"What?" Elsa asked. "What do you mean, _fly_?"

Hiksti walked to the edge of the cliff they'd just picnicked on unfastened some hidden compartments in his arms that Elsa hadn't realized were there. He pulled out a flap and started attaching it to various locations on his sides.

"It's really more of a glide," he amended. "You'll see."

"What are you talking about?" Anna asked.

Finished with his prep, Hiksti just grinned mischievously at them and spread his arms to show them the wing-like contraption. "This," he said simply, and stepped off the cliff.

Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff all screamed and jumped forward instinctively, reaching for the man too late.

But they needn't have worried, for below them was the rapidly-retreating immortal, gliding away over the winter forest like some crazy, outsized squirrel.

"That man…" Kristoff whispered. "... is epic."


	9. Chapter 9

They caught up to him an hour later, and he was oh-so-casually chatting with the pair of guards stationed at the bridge. Their faces betrayed their eagerness as they listened to whatever tale he was telling them.

"So then the second cow said, 'Good thing I'm actually an ass!'" Hiksti finished with a flourish. The guards roared with laughter until one of them caught sight of the royal sisters on Kristoff's sled, elbowed his companion, and they both snapped to attention with half-guilty expressions.

"Your majesty!" the one on the right said. They both saluted.

"As you were," Anna said graciously, and they relaxed fractionally. "Hello, Hiksti."

"Your majesty," the immortal greeted, his eyes still twinkling from his joke. He bowed as the sled made its way into the courtyard.

Kristoff gave him a wide, excited smile. "You've gotta show me how you did that!"

"Sure," Hiksti replied easily. "Just as soon as you figure out how to land without breaking your neck."

"But… but how -"

"Oh, hush," Anna said softly. "You are _not_ jumping off any cliffs! Promise me!" She thrust her face closer to his and narrowed her eyes.

Kristoff stared down into her bright blue eyes, and found he couldn't deny her at all. "Okay, I promise," he said.

Anna relaxed. "Good." And they were well and truly into the courtyard, now.

Hiksti looked around for Elsa and saw her standing at the far end of the bridge just staring at him. He raised a hand and waved at her, but she stood stock-still, waiting. With a short sigh, he began jogging toward her. "Elsa," he greeted as he ran up to her.

"Hiksti."

"Why didn't you come in with the others?"

"Because I wanted to talk to you," she explained.

"Alright." He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and waited.

"Our list was short. And… since we don't know where Loki is, I think we should go into Ahtohallan."

He stood very still, eyes trained on hers with razor-sharp focus. "The idea bothers you. I could tell from the moment we met."

She nodded. "It feels… _wrong… _to have someone else in there. It's… its just…" she trailed off, trying to find the words, and Hiksti gave her the time she needed. "It's my place of power," she explained. "It's memories, it's my mother… It's personal. And it's dangerous. It's my home more than any other place on Earth has ever been."

Hiksti nodded slowly. "I could just wait for your return in the Northuldran village," he suggested slowly.

She shook her head. "No, you heard Grand Pabbie, we have to take this journey together." She took a slow, deep breath. "I've already talked with Anna and Kristoff about it, so they know that's the plan. Meanwhile they're going to comb the library here to look for any clues as to Loki's whereabouts."

Hiksti nodded. "Sounds sensible. When do we leave?"

"Right away," she said. "Before I change my mind."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

By late evening they were back in the Northuldran village, dinner had been eaten, and the fire in the fireplace was burning merrily thanks to Bruni. They sat on the couch before it, relaxed and quiet in each other's company.

"What will you do after the curse is broken?" Elsa asked quietly.

Hiksti shrugged. "I don't know. I never really thought about it. I always assumed I'd just cut my throat and be done with it, but… I can't do that now." He paused. "Smithing, maybe? I'm good at that."

"Are you?" she asked, interested.

He nodded. "That was my first apprenticeship. I started when I was about nine or ten years old. Swords and shields and axes and arrowheads and stuff like that. Pots and pans and hammers and nails and needles, too, of course."

"You like smithing?"

"I like creating," he told her, and sent her a warm little smile. "Ever since I was a kid I've been a… a maker. Always tinkering, planning, trying out improvements and new ideas."

"Then perhaps an inventor?" she suggested.

"Perhaps. Or I could just live off of my treasure horde."

Elsa paused at that. "I suppose an immortal could amass a pretty large fortune, in eighteen hundred years."

"You have _no_ idea," he said smugly.

"Maybe you'll show me, someday," she chuckled.

"Yeah, why not?" he asked. "I'll give half to you. You could build yourself a solid gold house and still have enough to be obscenely rich for the rest of your life."

"I'm already obscenely rich, though," she protested.

"Are you?" he asked. "You're not the queen, any more."

That brought her up short. "Well, I… hm. I'm sure I have a generous stipend. And Anna would deny me nothing." She was positive about that. She'd never denied Anna even a copper coin and given her everything she'd ever wanted. Her sweet and kindly sister was only returning the generosity.

"Still, I've got more than I could spend in a normal lifetime. It's nothing to give it away, at this point."

"Maybe you could just… build libraries all over the world," she suggested.

"Ooh, now there's a thought," he said, sounding intrigued. "I _like_ that." They shared a warm smile, and almost lazily Hiksti reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingertip just barely grazed the shell of her ear, only for a moment, but to Elsa it felt like she'd been struck by lightning. The touch sizzled along her nerve endings, her skin tightened all over her body and goosebumps arose. She caught her breath.

"Don't," she whispered.

"What?" he asked, confused.

"Don't… touch me, please."

His gaze turned sad and apologetic. "I'm sorry," he said. "Are you okay?"

"I.. don't know," she admitted. She sat up and rubbed her arms, she saw his eyes drop to her shoulders and knew he could see the goosebumps. "I'm not used to being touched."

"Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head.

"What happened?"

"It was like… a shock," she said. "Like lightning." She felt so confused, her insides twisted in knots and a strange languor in her legs. "Everything tensed."

"Ahhh," he said. "Well, that's not the worst thing, then."

"What is it?" she asked. "Do you know what's happening to me?"

"Just your body's perfectly normal and healthy response to a... uh... a man you find, you know, attractive," he told her gently. "Nothing mysterious about it. You'll surely feel this more than once in your lifetime."

Elsa stared at him. "You mean… this is… desire?"

He nodded, and a compassionate smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "Don't worry, you don't have to pay attention to it at all. Don't _suppress _it, necessarily - with your powers that could be disastrous. But… you don't have to let it tell you what to do. Everyone goes through this, it's fine. You're fine."

Heat rose in her cheeks, embarrassment staining them red. "I had no idea," she murmured. "No wonder Anna and Kristoff…" she shook her head. "I'm truly sorry for the imposition."

He raised his hands and shook his head. "No imposition," he told her. "It happens. Just take a deep breath and let it pass and keep on going with your life. It's okay."

The knots inside of her twisted and turned, making her feel almost ill with apprehension at the thought that occurred to her next, but she had to ask. "Do you… do you think… I mean, do you see me as…" she trailed off, too mortified to continue.

"Of course," he reassured her. "I've got eyes. I mean, look at you." He waved a hand to indicate from the crown of her head to the tips of her feet. "And even better, you're smart and capable and… there's something in you that's fierce, unconquerable. You're a warrior queen." His eyes met with hers and stayed there.

"Oh," she said softly. Her lips were dry, so she licked them.

Hiksti's eyes dropped to her lips and for a second the expression on his face frightened her - it was so intense and dark and primal and new and she didn't know how to handle the shiver that ran up her spine or the heat pooling low inside her guts. "The fact that you've never been kissed," he whispered, "makes me kind of sad."

Her lips parted in surprise. "Don't let yourself be sad," she managed to say.

He lifted his eyes to hers once again. "Don't let yourself be lonely," he replied.

Possibility sizzled between them.

"Anna was right," she suddenly realized.

"What?"

"There _is_ something going on between us."

"Not yet," he said, shaking his head. "We haven't actually _done_ anything."

The crazy urge to fling herself at him and kiss him right then and there almost overtook her common sense, but instead she stood up and paced backward, putting some distance between them. "I… had better get to bed," she said.

He blinked slowly and then stood up, too, and his face was serene and kind. "Good night, Elsa."

"Good night, Hiksti," she whispered. Then she turned and fled.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

She slept deeply that night, but her dreams were plagued with images of Hiksti. Images of herself and Hiksti, together. Embracing, holding hands, kissing. When she woke up in the morning she was gripped in an irritable and distracted mood, dwelling on her dreams and these new feelings that were so overwhelming, and trying to let them pass through her as he'd suggested last night. She was determined not to let them dictate her actions. She'd decide what to do with her head, thank you very much, and not her womb. Only she had no idea how to handle any of this and his advice wasn't _working _and her womb seemed to be winning.

She usually ate breakfast with the Northuldran outside, and today she stalked to the communal fire with snowflakes trailing in her wake. Yelana and Ryder were already there, and the young man gave a bowl of stew first to his elder, then to Elsa. "Good morning," he greeted cheerfully.

"Good morning," Elsa said "Yelana, can I ask your advice?"

"Always, child."

Elsa's eyes darted to Ryder. "I mean… alone?"

"Oh, right, uh…" Ryder said. "I'll just… go over… there." He awkwardly stepped away.

Yelana seemed amused by this exchange. "What is it, my dear?"

"I don't know how to manage these feelings," she said in a rush. She had a bit of the savory soup.

"And what feelings are those?" asked the old woman.

"They're about Hiksti," she said quietly. She lifted her spoon again and put it back down, her stomach full of too many butterflies that left no room for food.

"Your guest? The one you haven't deigned to introduce us to?"

Shame-faced, Elsa nodded. "Sorry, it's been.. Difficult. There's a lot going on."

"We would help, if we could," Yelana reminded her.

"I know," Elsa said softly. "I'm not used to… a community."

"It's alright," Yelana said. "You'll get there, in time." She had a spoonful of stew, and Elsa did as well. "So tell me about this Hiksti of yours. Unusual name."

"Long story short," Elsa said, "He's been cursed by Loki with immortality, he's over eighteen-hundred years old, and he came to me to try to break the curse. I've promised to help him and he's promised to live out his life until he dies of old age if I do break the curse. But in the past few days that I've known him, there are all these confusing feelings and I don't know what to do with them."

"You find him good to look upon?" Yelana asked, her eyes sparkling.

Elsa nodded mutely.

"And you yearn to be close to him?"

She nodded again.

"You find yourself thinking of his moods, his voice, his touch?"

Elsa looked down at her stew, nodded again.

"This is very common, in the young," Yelana reassured her. "It happens to everyone."

"But how do I deal with it?" she asked desperately. "How am I supposed to - to function with all this distraction?"

"Just kiss him, girl."

Elsa stared at her, stunned.

Yelana laughed kindly. "You have two choices. Either distance yourself from him until the feelings pass, or just kiss him and be done with the wondering."

"Be done with it?"

"One way or another, a kiss will end it," the elder promised. Her smile contained years of secrets and she had another spoon of stew.

"What's one way, and the other?" Elsa demanded.

"He could kiss you back," she replied sagely. "Or not."

The thought of Hiksti kissing her back excited and terrified her at the same time, and the thought of his not kissing her back terrified and mortified her. She set the stew down and stood up, her heart beating wildly in her chest.

"Wait," Yelana said. She was holding out a sprig of winter mint. "Chew on this. That stew has onions in it."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The mint was chewed and Elsa now stood in front of Hiksti's door. Her insides roiled and her palms were sweating - actually sweating! - but she steeled her resolve and rapped smartly on the wood.

"Hmm?" His voice was sleep-roughened.

"Can I come in?" she asked, hating the tremble in her voice.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "Just a -"

But she'd already opened the door and there he was, sprawled on the bed with the quilt pulled up to his waist and nothing on as far as she could see.

"- minute," he finished.

Elsa's breath left her in a whoosh as she took in her first naked male torso. Broad shoulders, lean muscles, so many muscles, a light smattering of reddish-brown hair across his chest, then picking up again just below his navel and disappearing under the quilt.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and stared back at her, blinking sleepy eyes beneath a tousled bed-head. "Like what you see?" he drawled, an amused grin parting his lips.

Elsa stepped back and closed the door between them. She stood there with her hand on the knob, staring at her fingers as they loosely rested on the silver metal. Her heart was beating so loudly she was half-afraid Hiksti would think she was knocking on his door again. Not a moment later he yanked the door open and almost walked into her - or hopped, rather, as he hadn't taken the time to don his prosthesis. He gripped the door jam and stared down at her. He was wearing a plain off-white tunic that reached his knees, and she stared at the stump of his leg in fascination.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, his voice serious.

She looked up into those brilliant green eyes. "Yelana says I can distance myself from you or just kiss you and get it over with."

He blinked several times. "Does she, now?"

She nodded. "But I can't distance myself from you, can I? Because I made a promise to help you."

"This… is true," he said cautiously.

"So I guess I have to kiss you, and see whether or not you'll kiss me back, and that'll be the end of it."

"It will?" he asked, raising eyebrows.

"That's what Yelana said."

"And she is…?"

"The village elder," Elsa explained.

"She sounds… wise?"

"She is," Elsa agreed.

He stared down at her patiently, his eyes meandering back and forth between her eyes and her lips. She remembered that she'd told him last night not to touch her, and that right now he was respecting that command, and the realization of it made her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

So Elsa kissed him. She rose up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his - just for a second. Then it was back on flat feet to stare at him and take in what was happening to her. Which was a lot of butterflies and thundering heartbeats and second-guessing.

"You didn't kiss me back," she whispered, trying and failing to not sound disappointed.

"That wasn't a kiss, though," he told her, his voice very quiet and intimate.

"What?" She was pretty sure it had been.

"A kiss is more like this," he said. He took one hand off of the door jam and slid a soft finger across her lips, making her eyes drift shut. His fingers slid along her jaw, beneath her ear, sending a shiver down her spine, and buried themselves gently in her hair to cradle the back of her head. Then she felt his hot breath against her cheek and his lips were pressing against hers, warm soft flesh against her cool skin, wet friction gliding, teasing. His beard was soft and tickled her cheeks.

The lighting was back, blasting through her body from every place he touched, setting her skin aflame, igniting an inferno within her. Her hands decided to gather great fistfuls of his tunic and she pulled him closer, as a rough, needy sound ripped from her throat.

Hiksti lost his balance and they fell down - somehow he managed to turn them so she landed on top, and their kiss was broken as gravity asserted its dominance. They landed with twin grunts, and for a moment Elsa just focused on getting her breath back. "You okay?" he wheezed.

She was fine, and all she could think about was his hand on her back, a miniature fire she could feel even through the fabric of her dress. "Yeah," she said. She was inches too far away from his lips so she wiggled closer and kissed him again.

Hiksti groaned and gripped her more tightly to him, returning the kiss with a skill that made her dizzy and breathless. Somehow her braid came undone and her hair spilled around them, blocking out the rest of the world, and it was just the two of them and that's all she wanted, right now.

Hiksti pulled his lips from hers and peppered little kisses along her jaw and down the white column of her neck. "Tell me to stop," he whispered roughly. His hands slid slowly down toward her waist. "Or I won't."

Elsa gasped and tossed her head back, shuddering.

"Elsa," he breathed. His teeth found her shoulder and he nipped, and her hands formed claws and gently raked across his shoulders. She liked that it made him writhe, liked the feel of him beneath her. She liked it just as much when he suddenly flipped them over and pinned her beneath his heavy, solid weight, his big hot hands gripping her wrists.

"Should we be doing this?" he asked her.

She stared up at him, trying to catch her breath, trying to force her muzzy mind to consider his question reasonably. "If… if we do…"

"Then it will be wonderful," he told her. "I'd make sure of it. But you're about to give me a gift that can only be given once. A gift I can't give you in return. I would gladly accept it, but you need to be sure."

"Do… you love me?" she asked.

He stared at her for a long time, and sighed, and released her wrists and sat with his back against the wall. "I respect you," he said. "I'm clearly very attracted to you. I care for you. I worry about you. I think about you. I'm your friend, forever. But I'm afraid to love you the way I loved my wife. I'm afraid because if you can't break my curse… then my love for you would break me, in the end." He shook his head. "And I've already been broken like that."

Elsa understood exactly what he was saying. She sat up, too, and looked at where his hand splayed on the dark wood floor, looked at the pale fingers that had been touching her so recently. "Do you think we could make it work if your curse was broken?" she asked quietly.

He took his time thinking on that, wanting to give her an honest answer. "Yeah," he said finally. "I know we could." He tilted his head to one side and considered her. "Do you love me?"

"I… don't think so," she admitted. "Not yet. But I could. I so easily could." She picked at a thread on her skirt. "I'm afraid, too, though."

He reached out his hand and she took it, accepting the comfort he offered. "The choice is always between fear and love," he said quietly.

"And love can mean so many things."

He nodded, squeezed her hand. "Yes. But… we'll figure this out together, alright?"

She nodded and smiled at him. "We will."


	10. Chapter 10

Ahtohallan sang to her as they neared it, riding over the choppy waves in his little skiff. Hiksti was an expert sailor, efficiently steering them exactly where they wanted to go and landing on the icy shore without trouble. They hopped out of the little boat and Elsa led them into the glacier, singing softly in response to the frozen river's tune. As she usually did, she placed her hand on the ice and slid it along, eliciting a response by the way of mutli-hued lights beneath the slick and frozen surface, leading them farther in.

When they emerged from the tunnel to the lip of the chasm where she'd first seen him, Elsa gave Hiksti a little smile. "It doesn't feel so bad to have you here," she admitted. "Not like that first day."

"I'm glad of it," he answered. "How do you usually get across this?"

"Well, I usually just jump," she admitted.

He eyed the yawning blackness beneath them, broken only by the slender pillars rising from the deadly depths. "Yeah, I'm not gonna do that."

She giggled and put her hands out, and a delicate, beautiful bridge formed, descending gracefully from pillar to pillar to cross the chasm. "Come on," she said, holding out her hand. He slipped it into hers and she led him across.

"Can you just make anything you want out of ice?" he asked curiously.

"Pretty much," she said.

"Like the palace. And Olaf. You created life." He shook his head. "That is truly amazing."

"Most women end up creating life," she said off-handedly.

"Yeah, but… babies are not the same thing," he protested.

She smirked at him.

She led him deeper and deeper, through the grand hall with its massive columns soaring upward, and finally into the enormous icy cavern where her magic lived.

Hiksti stopped at the entrance, taking it all in with his wide emerald eyes. She continued walking until she stood in the center. "Show me," she murmured. She spread her arms, palm down, and then spun slowly, sweeping her arms up and lifting a mist that exploded outward.

Images came to life around the smooth walls of the cavern, lit from within. Memories.

Memories of Hiksti played out everywhere - his life. She saw his mother cradling him as a newborn, saw his childhood. She heard them calling him Hiccup the Useless. Saw his isolation. Saw his inquisitive mind, his experiments. This sensitive, intelligent, kind child was mocked and belittled, but somehow he just mustered on. She saw him shoot down the dragon, saw him befriend it. In a moment that made her heart soar, she watched him ride it.

She watched him lie and steal, watched him fool the others. Watched as he convinced them to accept all dragons, and saved lives. Watched the fight against the dragon queen, watched him lose his leg.

There were years of exploration, wars against others who wanted to kill the dragons. Alliances made. Inventions forged. She watched him fall in love. She watched him mature and grow, saw the respect his people had for him, now. And then she watched his mother find him after so long apart. Watched his father die. She watched him send the dragon into hiding to protect them. She watched him marry, and start a family.

She watched as he journeyed with the twins to the volcano, and saw Loki summoned, saw the god cursing Hiksti. She saw him remain young while his family aged. She saw the sadness that bent his neck as he moved them to keep them safe. Saw his grief when his wife passed.

"Stop," Hiksti said hoarsely. "Elsa, please."

The images froze. "I'm… sorry," she said.

"You don't want to see what happens after this," he told her, reaching up to scrub away the tears that streaked down his cheeks. "You don't need to."

She nodded slowly.

"Ask it to show you Loki," he told her.

"Show me," she commanded again.

The images in the walls faded and new ones took their place, scattered and fractured, difficult to look at. Elsa grimaced and clenched her fists, but the images did not want to coalesce. "I can't," she gasped. "Something is stopping me."

"What is it?" Hiksti asked, frowning at the icy walls around them and willing the pictures to come.

"Something is..." she was breathing hard by this point. "Pushing back..." strange discordant sounds shuddered from the walls

An unease settled in Hiksti's stomach but he ignored it. "Don't hurt yourself," he warned. "Maybe this isn't the way."

"I _refuse_... to concede," she growled. "I can almost see it..." Sweat was beading on her brow, Hiksti could see that from where he was still hovering in the entrance. But she strained and screamed her defiance, and finally one image solidified enough to make out.

An almost incomprehensibly beautiful man and woman were in a dimly lit cave. The man was naked and chained to the jagged rocks. His face was wracked with pain and he strained against the strange, twisted chains that bound him. Littering the floor around him were the bleached white bones of man. The woman, her expression one of grief, stood over him with a bowl upraised to catch glistening green ooze that dripped from the fangs of a serpent. Were her bowl not in place, the venom would drip onto the beautiful man's face.

But the bowl filled and the woman bit her lip and took it away. The venom dripped onto the man's face and he howled in agony, struggling mightily and shaking. She hurried away, the venom sloshing onto her hands and burning her as well, stumbling down a short tunnel while the mountain shook and heaved, only to stop when the tunnel opened to the air. She dumped out the contents of the bowl and turned back, hurrying into the dark to save her husband from what misery she could.

"I know that mountain," Hiksti said. "I know where they are, Elsa." His hands were gripped in fists, his knuckles white with the force of the emotions that seized him. "I know where they are!"

Elsa's arms dropped and she looked at him, her blue eyes enormous in her face, which was suddenly much too pale for his liking. "Good," she said. And then she dropped. The image of the gods disappeared and fractured pictures played across the ice, memories of Elsa's past, her lonely childhood, her isolation, her fear.

Hiksti ran to her side, barely registering the images of little Elsa that played larger-than-life around him, slipping on the ice and falling to his knees, scrambling to get to her as fast as possible. "No, no, no, no, no!" he said. "Elsa!" he picked up her head and cradled it in his lap, gently patting her cheek. "Elsa, wake up!"

Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat and her breathing was deep and even, and when he realized that she wasn't dead, but merely exhausted, he breathed a sigh of relief. Her white skin felt so cold, but he wasn't sure if that was normal or not. "I got you," he said softly. "You rest. I'll be with you until then."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

He emerged from within the glacier slowly, taking his time to judge every single step, for he didn't want to slip and fall. Elsa was still unconscious and lay across his back, and after a quick apology to her dignity he'd slung her back there and gripped her under the thighs to keep her secure while he removed her from the glacier.

As soon as he was out the wind, which had been gusting all day, picked him up right off the ice and swept him along.

"Whoooooooaaaaahhhh!" he cried, as he was flipped and turned in the air and Elsa's body peeled away from his back. Somehow he managed to rotate and clasp her tightly in his arms, almost crushing her to his chest.

The wind was relentless, and sped them over the waters as fast as a Night Fury's flight, and for a minute he allowed himself to revel in the almost forgotten feeling of flight - just different enough from a controlled glide. Through the forest they spun and gamboled, his feet never touching the ground, the stark tree trunks rising from snow drifts and blackened rotting leaves rushing around them but somehow never touching them.

They reached the Northuldran village in record time and Hiksti and his precious cargo were deposited gently on the ground. "Thank you, Gale," he said breathlessly. All around him villages were rushing toward them, concern etched on their faces.

"What happened?" asked an old woman, placing worn hands on Elsa's face and arm.

"Yelana, I presume?" Hiksti asked, and she nodded.

"She exhausted herself, I think. We need to get her into her bed, keep her warm."

"Yes," she said. "Come, Hiksti." She tugged and pulled him along toward the cabin, not that he needed the urging. "She is so cold."

"Like ice," he agreed.

They got her into the cabin and he went straight for her bedroom, pausing only to let Yelana open the door and peel back the covers. He placed her gently on the mattress and pulled the covers up to her chin. Then stood looking down at her anxiously.

"Well what are you waiting for?" snapped Yelana. "She needs warmth!"

The fireplace in the bedroom roared to life with pinkish flames and Hiksti spun around to see a salamander within the sturdy brick construction. It stared back at him and licked its own eyeball.

"Bruni?" he asked. The salamander nodded.

"It won't be enough," Yelana said. "Get in there with her, Hiksti."

He stared at her dumbfounded for a moment before he realized the truth of her words, and then he shucked off his boot and climbed under the covers with her. He pulled her close to him, pressing as much of his warmth into her icy pale skin as he could.

"I'll be back with hot water bottles," Yelana said. "Keep her warm."

"I will," Hiksti promised. He buried his face in her hair and worried, and listened to her breathe.

Not ten minutes later Yelana was back with two earthenware crocks, corked and full of hot water. A young man and woman, alike enough to be siblings, were right behind her, each carrying another two, and Yelana slipped all of them under the covers one at a time and nestled them against Elsa's slender form. Then she placed her fingertips against the pulse in her neck and silently counted. "Her heartbeat is good," she said. "We will take turns watching over her with you." She turned to the others, who were staring at Hiksti with wide eyes. "Go," she said. "Come back in two hours with more hot water."

They slipped out without a word, and Yelana sat herself down in a comfortable armchair between the fire and the bed. Her steady dark gaze zeroed in on Hiksti's eyes, visible above the crown of Elsa's head. "So," she said. "We meet at last."

"How do you do?" Hiksti asked wryly.

"Very well, thank you." She eyed him for a moment more. "You are immortal?" she asked.

He blinked. "She told you?"

"She did."

"Was that when she was asking about kissing?"

A smile flickered across the old woman's lips. "It was," she confirmed.

"Yeah, I'm immortal. Trying not to be."

"And she," said Yelana, "Is precious to you because she can help you break this curse."

"Yes," he said. "Among other things."

A sly look crossed the Northuldran's face. "Indeed?"

"Indeed," he replied. And didn't elaborate.

For a long while she simply sat in her chair and stared at him. Hiksti merely stared back. He was very, very good at being patient. She broke, first. "Tell me, Immortal Viking, why don't you want to be immortal, any longer?"

"People aren't made to live this long," he said. "We aren't made to outlive everyone we love again and again."

"But life is good," she said.

"Ever hear of too much of a good thing?"

She chuckled and nodded. "And once the curse is broken? What will you do then?"

"Just live until I die," he told her. "You sound very sure that the curse will be broken."

"She freed us," Yelana pointed out. "She is strong, her power is strong."

"I've seen it."

"They why did she collapse?"

"I think… I asked her to show me too much."

"What did you ask for?" Her voice was dangerous.

"I asked her to show me Loki."

"The Viking trickster god?"

"The very same."

"He is real, then?"

Hiksti nodded.

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully and pondered this for a while. "That is good to know," she said. "If one god is real, why not all of them? It's a comfort to be told unequivocally that when this body dies I will still continue."

Hiksti sighed into her hair and breathed in the faint scent of the soap she used, something floral and light.

"I'm very tired," he mumbled against the soft platinum strands. "I'd like to rest, now."

"I'll be quiet," Yelana whispered.

And so he closed his eyes and fell asleep. His dreams were filled with the images he'd glimpsed on the cave walls, Elsa's girlhood, her anxiety, her fear... and in those dreams he reached out to her and gave her something shining and golden and her fear dropped away, and all was right with the world.


	11. Chapter 11

He slept clear through to the next morning, only half-rousing when Yelana changed the water bottles. The dawn was just pinking up the sky and birds were beginning to sing when he opened his eyes and found Elsa staring directly into them with eyes as blue as the northern sky at noon. A quick glance showed him that the young girl he'd seen last night bringing the water bottles was curled up in the armchair fast asleep, her head at an odd angle with her mouth wide open. She was snoring gently.

He looked back to Elsa again and couldn't stop the stupid smile that spread across his face. "Good morning," he whispered. "Glad to have you back."

"Sorry if I worried you," she whispered back.

Her slim hands were tucked between them and he encapsulated them with his own and brought them to his chest, just above his heart. "It's okay," he said. "It doesn't matter, any more." He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"Where is he?" she asked, and he didn't have to ask her to clarify.

"Kebnekaise," he answered. "Sweden."

"That's got to be… 1700 kilometers from here," she whispered. "We'll have to sail north to Elvegård and walk from there. Perhaps it's 80 or 90 kilometers as the crow flies?"

"Over mountainous terrain," he murmured. He rested his chin on the top of her head and pondered. "Let's say two days of hard hiking."

"Hm," she agreed. She wiggled her fingers free and started playing with the laces of his tunic, twirling them around. "How can I convince Anna not to come?"

"She's that stubborn?" he whispered.

"You have no idea," she sighed. "But I feel like… this isn't her adventure. And I can't risk her, not again."

"How about we just don't tell her?" he suggested.

She pulled back to look at him. "What?"

"You never said you'd take her," he pointed out. "When she pressed the issue you just said we should figure out where Loki is. And we just did. So let's just… go. You and I."

"We have to go to Arendelle to hire a ship," she noted.

"Didn't you just tell me yesterday that you can make anything you want out of ice?"

She blinked a couple of times at him. "Oh… right. That sounds like a plan." She sat up in the bed, startling the girl in the chair awake.

The brunette clapped a hand to her neck and groaned. "Oh… that hurts. Elsa!" She sat up and grinned. "You're awake! You're okay!" She levered herself out of the chair and came to the bed to embrace the Snow Queen. "I'm so happy!"

Elsa hugged her back. "Me, too, Honeymaren." She pulled back after a minute and held the girl at arm's length. "We're going to need a couple of riding reindeer and a week's worth of food, and camping supplies."

Honeymaren blinked a couple of times. "Ooooo….kayyyy," she said slowly. "We can get that for you. Is this about his curse?" she asked.

"I'm right here," Hiksti observed.

"Yes," Elsa confirmed. "Let's get going on this as soon as we can."

And so they did.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

They ended up taking three reindeer - one for each of them to ride, and one to carry their supplies. They made their way north through the forest to the sea, and there Hiksti drew a plan for her and Elsa magically built a fine little sailing ship, just large enough for two people and three reindeer to fit comfortably. Once aboard Hiksti grabbed a rope and tested it. "Fascinating," he said. "It just feels like really cold rope." He pulled out his gloves and put them on.

"You should see what I can do with fashion," she quipped.

From there Hiksti took over, sailing the ship north along the coast of Norway. The days were short at this time of the year, but they made the most of the light, finally relying on the Northern Lights to anchor in a hidden little fjord devoid of human habitation. They made camp on the rocky shore, which was a novel experience for Elsa.

"You've never camped, before?" Hiksti asked, his eyes wide.

"Of course not," she said. "I grew up in a castle."

"...fair point," he acknowledged. "Don't worry, tomorrow night we'll sleep in Elvegård. They have an inn, right?"

"I'm pretty certain they do," she said. She watched the reindeer foraging on the nearby slopes. "So… aren't there camping traditions we should do?"

Hiksti snorted. "Hm… cooking food over an open fire," he suggested. "Have you, uh, ever cooked, before?"

"Actually, no," she admitted.

"Okay, I'll do that part, then."

"Teach me?" she asked.

He smiled at her and nodded. "The first thing is to build the fire correctly," he began. And over the course of the next half hour he taught her how to make a very simple and easy vegetable soup, and with it they at dried apples and cheese and hard bread. He found her to be an attentive student and a quick learner.

"You did great!" he said enthusiastically. "This is actually pretty good. Not too salty."

She had to agree. "Wait 'til I tell Anna that I cooked. She'll fall down in surprise!"

He chuckled and slung an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her against his side.

She blushed ferociously.

"Any other camping traditions?" she asked.

"I usually skip the singing," he admitted. "Unless I'm very, very alone."

"Oh, sing me a campfire song," she told him.

"Uhhhh… no."

"C'mon," she cajoled.

"It will literally hurt your ears," he informed her seriously.

"I doubt that."

He sighed for a long breath and then said, "Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you." Then he sang the first verse to a sailing song. He stopped at her pained expression. "See?"

"Wow, you… you weren't kidding," she said, covering her nervous laugh with her hands.

"Nope."

"Okay, I… promise that I will never ask you to sing again."

He guffawed and she joined in.

"Let's see… we could tell ghost stories."

Elsa shook her head immediately at that one. "Pass."

"Okay, well, that's… that's about it." He paused. "As far as traditions."

"Oh," she said. "Well." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "I'm not tired yet."

"Neither am I," he said.

The silence stretched between them for what seemed like forever, until Elsa looked up at him only to find that he was already looking down at her. "What are you thinking?" she asked softly.

"Just admiring the view," he told her.

"...that was a little cheesy."

"Ah, you're right," he agreed. "But if I said what I really wanted to you'd probably freeze me into a block of ice."

She pressed her lips together to suppress a smile. "I could."

"Oh, I know."

"Tell me anyway."

"I was thinking that I'd very much like to make love to you."

Her lips parted in a silent gasp and her eyes searched his face, found only truth in his gaze. "I… that's - that's not a - a good idea," she stammered. Hot blood turned her cheeks pink and the blush spread down her neck and further.

"I know," he said gently. "We won't." He playfully tapped the tip of her nose and said, "Boop."

She flinched back, then laughed.

"We could kiss, though," he suggested.

"Oh, yes, please!" she launched herself at him.

They were exceedingly carely not to do anything too improper. Kissing was as far as they went. And when they were both pink and out of breath Hiksti pulled back and suggested that she take a dip in the cold fjord waters, and told her that he had to find a convenient bush.

By the time he came back she was already in her bedroll in the little tent. He silently climbed in beside her and wrapped himself in his own blanket. They were facing each other, and she could dimly make out the whites of his eyes from the light of the dying fire that shone through the open flap.

"Goodnight, Hiksti," she whispered.

"Goodnight, Elsa," came his soft voice.

And they slept.


	12. Chapter 12

Their second day of sailing saw them to Elvegård. They drew a lot of stares, sailing in on a magical ice boat, and there was no possibility of disguising her identity. So she kept her chin high and greeted those who bowed, and walked with Hiksti into the town. They found a nice enough inn, probably the best in town. They paid for the reindeer to be stabled and fed and then paid for two rooms, and before the sun set they resupplied for their journey to the mountain and back.

For dinner they had trout and mashed turnips in butter, cheese and dark ale, as well as a salad of seaweed and pears and radishes. There was hot chocolate for dessert, an unexpected luxury that Elsa and Hiksti both delighted in.

They walked hand-in-hand to their rooms, checked up and down the hallway, found it empty of other people, and went together into the bigger of the rooms. There wasn't a question in either of their minds, any more, that they would sleep in the same bed. Fully clothed. Mostly.

"Can I rub your feet?" he offered once they were seated on the bed. "We've been standing in that boat almost all day, they must be tired."

"That would be nice," she said shyly. "Can I rub yours? Your foot?"

He nodded and they took care to wash their own feet, first, before a mutual foot massage.

Elsa had never had a foot massage before - or any massage at all - and she discovered, much to her embarrassment, that she was ticklish. "Shhh," he soothed, placing his entire warm hand along the sole of her foot and just holding it there until she relaxed again. He started slowly, retreating to more diffuse pressure each time she giggled, until soon enough she was sighing in appreciation.

As she didn't know what to do, she just copied him, her ministrations hesitant at first, but gaining confidence at his appreciative sighs and grunts. "Should I massage your, uh, leg, too?" she offered, gesturing to his stump.

He stared at her for a second and then slowly nodded. "Sure, if you want."

"I'd like to," she said. "If it's okay?"

"It's okay," he assured her.

"It won't hurt?"

He shook his head. "No, it's fine." Then he rolled up his pant leg and she got a good look at it for the first time. It was neatly done, with minimal scarring that had long since healed. She reached for it and he reached down, too, and covered her hands with his and showed her how to do it. "Ahhh," he finally sighed, and laid back against the mattress, closing his eyes in bliss.

She took care to massage the truncated calf muscle and his knee, and was just making her way up his thigh when his hand stopped her. "That's far enough," he warned. "We don't want to get too… frisky."

She blushed and took her hands away again. "Shall we sleep?" she asked.

He nodded and they climbed beneath the covers. "Turn your back to me," he suggested, and she did, and he snuggled up to her like he had when she'd collapsed.

"I like this," she sighed.

He smiled into her hair. "Me, too." He lazily traced spirals and circles up and down her arm, causing her to shiver and press back against him. "Odin's eye, you're beautiful," he murmured.

She couldn't stop the smug little grin that lit up her face. "You are, too."

His chuckle stirred her hair. "No one's called me that in a long time. I think the last person was my mother."

"Oh!" Elsa laughed. She turned her head to look back at him. "You _are _beautiful," she said again, her voice soft.

He kissed her. "Tell me more," he prompted with a chuckle.

"It's your eyes," Elsa murmured. "So bright and clear and just exploding with knowledge." She kissed him again. "Your eyes tell me that you're kind, and trustworthy, and thoughtful."

"Go on," he grinned. He kissed her in return.

She sighed and relaxed against the pillow, and reached for his hand. She threaded her fingers through his. "You hands are beautiful," she said. "Long fingers, and there's strength and dexterity in them. Even your callouses show that you work hard."

"You haven't got any callouses," Hiksti observed. "Not even on your feet." He nuzzled along her neck. "How are you so soft?"

"I exfoliate," she said plainly, arching her neck to give him better access.

"Hmm." He kissed her neck, his beard tickling, and she shivered and arched into him. A soft little mewl escaped her and he grabbed her hip and pulled her to him and she felt… something…

She froze.

Hiksti froze.

"We'd better stop," she breathed.

There was a pause, and then he cleared his throat. "Yeah," he agreed. He rolled onto his back and she did the same. They held hands and stared at the ceiling until their candle burned itself out, and after that they listened to the sleepy sounds of the inn until they fell asleep.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The next morning they got up with the sun and they were on their way to Kebnekaise, riding the reindeer. Elsa passed some of the time by singing some folk songs she knew, which he appreciated. And he passed some of the time by telling her of some of his adventures over the millennia.

"One time," he said, "I journeyed to the New World to see what there was to see."

"And what was there to see?" she asked curiously.

"People, of course, and the most beautiful country you can imagine."

"What are the people like, there?"

"Oh, well… there are hundreds of tribes," he told her. "Thousands, perhaps. Some are farmers and fishers, some hunt and gather, some live in enormous towns, others in small villages."

"So… they're people," she summed up drily.

"Exactly," he said. "They love their families and plan for the future and pray to gods that they'll have enough to last them through the winter and enough rain in the spring. They tell stories and sing songs and make things, just like people do."

"I've heard they're savages," she said carefully.

"Don't believe everything you hear," he said. "I've met plenty of savage Norsemen, English, French, Huns… every person has savagery in them. And they all have compassion and beauty."

"Some more than others, one way or the other," she supposed.

He nodded. "Yeah, of course."

"Tell me about the land," she prompted.

"Where to begin?" he said. "There's so _much_ of it! When you arrive in the New World you can make port in Boston. That side of the country is pretty well-developed, with cities and trade ports and the like. There's a gentle sort of mountain range full of game and fish and fowl and lumber."

Elsa recalled a map she'd seen of it. "There's a great river, yes? The Misspea?"

"Mississippi," he corrected. "You've never seen a river so wide - at one point it's over seventeen kilometers from one bank to the other."

"You're kidding," she said, shocked.

"No, I'm not," he reassured her. "Though of course most of the river isn't that wide. Then once you go west of the river the Great Plains begin. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles of great open plains, rolling and golden, covered in herds of millions upon millions of buffalo."

"I've seen a picture of one," Elsa said eagerly. "Huge, shaggy, hulking beasts with little pointed horns."

"That's the one," he agreed amiably. "South of the plains there are terrible desserts populated by tumbleweeds and cacti, home to poisonous lizards and rattlesnakes. There are canyons like you've never seen, stretching all the way to the horizon and beyond, so deep that you can't hear a rock hit the bottom when you drop it. And further west of that begin the Rocky Mountains."

"We have mountains here," Elsa pointed out.

"Not like these," he told her. "They're twice as high, and twice as dangerous. Full of bears and mountain lions and wolves - there are wolves all over the New World."

Elsa shivered and looked about, as if half-expecting a wolf to leap out at them. They were deep in the forest, by now, making good time toward the Swedish border.

"What was your favorite part of the New World?" she asked him.

"Oh, the trees," he said instantly. "They have these trees on the far western coast - it's hard to describe them. The trunks are wide enough that you could cut a hole and drive a wagon through it. They're evergreens over one hundred meters tall and the nearest branch to the ground is fifty or sixty meters up. They're called the redwood tree." He paused and smiled. "They're thousands of years old."

Elsa tried to imagine a tree that tall and it filled her with wonder.

"Deeper in the mountains there's a similarly sized tree, a bit shorter, but much fatter, called sequoia. You could carve an entire house wholecloth from just the width of a trunk." He shook his head and sighed. "I probably spent twenty years just wandering around looking at trees."

She grinned at him, but it was tinged with sadness, for she was starting to feel distant from him, this immortal who'd travelled the world. "What's your favorite part of the Old World?" she asked curiously.

"Right now?" he asked. She nodded and he smiled at her. "You."

They made good time that day, for the weather held up, and by nightfall they guessed that they were just about at the border of Norway and Sweden. They made camp next to a deep blue lake and fell asleep in each other's arms with the Northern Lights dancing overhead.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The next day they were up and moving before the sun was fully over the horizon, and Hiksti urged the reindeer as fast as he thought safe. There was a restless anxiety to him that Elsa was afraid to address, and she just helped whenever and wherever she could, distracting him when he got too focused.

When they stopped for lunch he began gathering some sturdy-looking sticks and fiddling with them. He continued to play with them even when they got back in their saddles and rode.

"What is that?" Elsa asked curiously.

"Just something that I think might help," he said, completely distracted. She decided to let it lie and he sunk into contemplative silence.

At last, in the late afternoon, they saw the mountain and Elsa knew that they would make their camp at the foot. "We'll ascend in the morning," he told her. "It looks like it'll take six or seven hours."

She took a deep breath and then nodded her head. She helped him to pitch the tent and he started the fire, and she made the soup while he finished whatever it was that he was working on until the light truly failed them and he was forced to stop.

She crawled into her bedroll first, and when he joined her a few minutes later she waited until he was laying down before she rolled over and straddled him. She was only wearing a thin tunic, unbothered by the cold winter air.

"Elsa," he said, sounding surprised. He raised his hands and let them hover uncertainly in the air above her thighs.

"I want this," she told him. "You. I'm certain."

His big warm hands settled on her thighs and he looked up at her, his smile gentle and sweet. "Me, too," he whispered.

It was hours later by the time they got to sleep, but they were warm and content, and Elsa knew then, surrounded by his arms and his scent, that she loved him, fiercely and totally.


	13. Chapter 13

It didn't take them six or seven hours to ascend, because Elsa used her powers to simply make stairs and walking paths where needed. They took a break halfway up because she was tired and hungry, and he used food and kisses to revive her spirits.

Then they were almost to the summit when he grabbed her wrist and pointed.

A cave.

They picked their way carefully over the scree, and Elsa pointed out a congealing pool of green near the entrance. "The venom," she said quietly.

He nodded, and took the lead, slowly walking into the cave. Just inside he took a torch from his pack and lit it with flint and steel, and held it above his head to light the way.

Elsa knew this place. They had seen it in Ahtohallan. Just when the light of day failed to reach them in the long and winding passage, they heard a faint scream. It came again and again, and every hair on her body stood on end. "Hurry," she urged him. Her breath frosted in the air that she'd chilled in her anxiety.

Another ten minutes of walking, careful not to slip on the wet cave floor, and the passage opened up into a cavern. Stalactites dripped from the ceiling onto their twin stalagmites, and the uneven floor was littered with small boulders and rocks, all wet and glistening in the light of their torch.

She knew what she would see, but somehow she still wasn't prepared.

The gods before her were larger than humans, the woman easily eight feet tall and her husband closer to ten. Sigyn's long pale hair was bound in a simple braid and kept out of her face by a leather band, and her dress was of an antique style, but made of fine wool. Her angelic face was lined with grief. And she held a stone bowl aloft, to catch the venom that dripped from an enormous stone viper.

Bound to the boulder in red chains lay Loki, nude and helpless. His long black hair streamed across the rock and his eyes were trained on his wife imploringly. "Do not leave me," he groaned, his voice filling the cavern.

"I am here," she reassured him.

Hiksti's metal foot scuffed a pebble, and the sound became magnified in the cavern. The gods turned to look at them, and the two humans froze in place. The gaze of a god is a terrible thing, and Elsa, for all her ice and ferocity, quailed.

"Who goes there?" Sigyn demanded. "What human dares intrude?"

"Hiksti Skrípi Haddock III, goddess."

"I know you," said Loki. "The little chief whose friends summoned me. Remember, wife? I cursed him."

"I remember," she said, her voice hard. "Have you come for vengeance, immortal?"

"No, oh goddess," Hiksti said. "I came to help, and to beg your husband to remove the curse."

"What help can you possibly provide?" Loki asked. "Have you come to free me?"

"No," Hiksti said again. "For that would begin Ragnarök, and no mortal can do such a thing."

"He speaks the truth," Sigyn said sadly. "Do not get your hopes up, husband. He cannot help you."

"I can," Hiksti insisted. "I can build you something to hold aloft the bowl and funnel away the poison so that it cannot drip onto Loki's face."

"Such a thing," Sigyn said. "Such a thing would be a great gift, indeed. There lie the bones of my son, unburied, for I dared not leave my husband unattended long enough to see to it. I have watched over the centuries as his flesh rotted and rats gnawed at them, as they bleached white and began to sink into the cave floor, little by little." Tears welled in her eyes and dropped like diamonds to the cave floor. "Immortal, if you can do as you claim, you will be rewarded."

Hiksti set down his things and began to take out the large sturdy sticks he'd collected. "Help me," he implored Elsa, who finally took a breath of air and began to move.

"A magic elemental," Loki said, studying her with eyes as dark as a starless night. "Why are you here, little one? What is your name?"

"I'm Elsa of Arendelle. I am here to help Hiksti," she said. Then added, "Your worship."

"You love him," Loki observed.

Hiksti paused for a microsecond and glanced at her.

Elsa didn't answer, just bowed her head and kept working to build the scaffold.

"Ah, he loves you in return," Sigyn said softly. "New and tender as an open wound, is this immortal's love for you, little elemental."

Elsa's eyes locked with Hiksti, and he nodded at her, his face solemn, bright green eyes shining the truth at her, love and fear of that love.

"Is she the first love you've found since I cursed you?" Loki asked, sounding curious.

Hiksti sent the god a scathing glare before turning his eyes back to his work. "I was married when you cursed me," he bit out. "And she grew old and withered and died, and I _did not_. I have outlived… everyone…" his voice caught. "So to answer your question, oh god, I have not let myself love another until now, for fear of watching her age and perish."

"Then you were punished suitably," Loki decided. "I am satisfied that you have suffered enough. It is good that the curse should be removed, after all."

And in that moment Elsa hated him for ever cursing Hiksti in the first place. If she could have plunged a dagger into Loki's heart she would have. As it was, frost formed on everything she touched and the cave became bitingly cold.

"Temper yourself, little elemental," Sigyn warned softly. "You will not test me."

Hiksti laid his hand over hers and she met his eyes and took several deep breaths. The ice melted away. A moment later Hiksti stepped back from his handiwork. "Done," he announced.

Sigyn gently settled her stone bowl atop the scaffold, which easily held. The venom dripped steadily into it. She looked down at her white hands and then to Hiksti. "A gift, indeed," she said. Then she turned and gathered the bones of Loki's son, weeping all the while. He wept with her, their grief filling the cavern, a palpable thing that shook the humans to their core. She laid them out and put her face into her hands. "I have not shovel or pick," she wailed.

"I can help," Elsa said. "May I?"

Sigyn nodded, so Elsa stepped forward and placed her hands against the cave floor. She closed her eyes in concentration, and ear-splitting cracks and groans filled the air. Hiksti watched in wonder as ice formed in a perfect rectangle ten feet long, and, like a glacier, heaved the stone away from its bed. A perfect grave six feet deep now gaped in the cave floor. The goddess placed the bones in the grave and Elsa gestured, and the rock she'd lifted away settled down again, being worn and smoothed before their eyes into beautiful oblong orbs to form a cairn.

And then Elsa turned to a boulder and with her ice and her magic she shaped a second stone bowl identical to the first and gave it to Sigyn. The goddess took the bowl in reverent hands. "No venom shall reach you, now," she vowed to her husband Loki.

Then she turned to Hiksti and extended her hand. "I grant your wish," she said. "To remove the -"

She never finished her sentence, because in that moment, Odin threw Gungnir, his spear which never misses.

Something inside of Elsa shifted and she could feel danger coming and she opened her mouth and screamed. A moment later a crack like the world splitting open sent her and Hiksti diving to the cave floor. "Run!" she screeched, and Hiksti's hand was in hers and and they ran pell-mell down the tunnel as it came down around them.

He didn't let go of her hand, his face terrified and white as he pulled her, yanked her along, urging her to go faster. The light of the outside world streamed toward them, bright and blue, they were almost there -

Elsa saw the huge chunk of rock descending toward them from the ceiling, and all she could imagine was Hiksti buried beneath the crushing granite for a million years until erosion set him free, dying and reviving endlessly in a never-ending cycle of pain.

She would not allow it.

Her magic sprung from her, shoved him bodily past the obstacle, threw him out of the tunnel and several meters beyond. It pushed her too, and she almost made it.

A rock the size of her torso caught her skull and brought her down, and Elsa died before she even knew she'd been struck.

Hiksti finished falling down the mountain slope and immediately scrambled across the loose scree, sliding and sobbing and screaming her name. "ELSA! ELSA!" He reached her body, half-buried in rubble and covered in a fine coating of dust, as he was. They were two gray figures on a gray mountainside, and the only color was the bright splash of her life's blood. "No," he said. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no… gods, please. No! PLEASE!" He cradled her head and lifted his face to the sky.

"YOU OWE ME, GODS! YOU OWE ME! GIVE HER BACK TO ME!" He sobbed.

He bowed his head and his tears rained down on her face, washing streaks of dust away, leaving trails of pale pink in their wake. "Elsa, you can't die," he groaned. "Please… please don't leave me alone." His tears fell. "Not again."

A shadow fell across him and he slowly looked up into the face of Hel. She was not a beauty like her father, having mottled blue and white skin and a long, dour face. Her lengthy black hair fell past her knees, and when she knelt beside Hiksti and Elsa's body, it pooled around her like ink.

"You did my father a great kindness," she said to him. "And I do you a kindness in return."

"Bring her back," he pleaded. "Please, please, please bring her back."

"Life must pay for life," she said. "Do you agree to the price?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation. "Take what you need from me, just save her, please."

Hel nodded and her spidery fingers impaled him.

Hiksti didn't even scream, for he was glad to make this sacrifice if it saved Elsa.

Hel's fingers came away and in them she held a little ball of pure golden light. She pressed it to Elsa's forehead and it sank in. A moment later and those sky-blue eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him. "Hiksti," she said.

Hel was gone, the debt was repaid. Hiksti didn't even notice because all he could see was Elsa. He pressed his face to hers and wept in sheer relief. "Thank you," he cried, over and over. "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."


	14. Chapter 14

Their descent down the mountain was considerably faster, this time. Elsa simply made a toboggan and they got into it and slid down the path she formed for them.

When they reached the bottom, where their tent still was, Hiksti immediately jumped out and pulled her with him. "I can't leave this place fast enough," he said.

They packed up their camp in record time and galloped their reindeer away until the animals were unable to run any longer. Then they got off and let them rest for a little bit to catch their breath, and then they led them until it was too dark to see. They made camp next to a small lake.

Elsa finally asked the question she'd been holding in since waking up in his arms. "What happened?"

Hiksti stared at her, eyes tormented, and she gave him the time he needed to answer. "You died," he said. He reached for her and pulled a lock of hair forward, crusted in her dried blood. "A rock just…" he couldn't make himself say it. He swallowed.

Elsa's heart sped up at the revelation. "But… I'm not dead, now."

He shook his head. "No, you're not. Hel showed up."

"Hell?"

"Loki's daughter. H-E-L. I was promised a godly gift, and a godly gift she gave."

"She brought me back."

He nodded and pressed his lips to her forehead and pulled her against him. "She brought you back." His relief was palpable, and she could feel him trembling.

"But how?"

"She said that only life can pay for life. And she took it from me. My immortality."

Elsa clutched his coat, sorting through the relief, fear, wonder, and confusion that swirled around in her. "So the curse is broken?"

He showed her his hand, and there she saw a tiny little cut, already scabbed over, at the base of his thumb. "If I was still immortal this would've been gone hours ago."

Elsa looked up at him, hardly daring to believe it. "So… you can grow old," she murmured.

"With you," he sighed. "If you'll have me."

"Forever," she vowed. They kissed, and this time there was nothing holding them back. This time, all fear was dispelled, and only love remained.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Sometime in the middle of the night Elsa started up from a deep sleep, disoriented and gasping. "Olaf!" she shouted.

Hiksti sat up groggily. "What? What's wrong?"

"Olaf is gone," she said. "Hold on, I…" she closed her eyes and her hand floated upwards as if she was reaching for something far away.

Hiksti stared at her in confusion for a long moment until she finally relaxed and sighed. "There, all done." She lay back down and Hiksti curled around her.

"What was that about?" he asked drowsily.

"I had to put Olaf back together," she explained. "He died when I died. Thank goodness water has memory."

Hiksti blinked at her a couple of times and then pressed his forehead to hers. "One, _wow_. Two, Anna's going to kill me."

She giggled and snuggled closer. "Welcome to the family."

The rest of their journey home was made with just as much urgency as their journey there, for Elsa didn't want her sister to worry any longer than necessary. While they traveled in the light of day they talked and planned and laughed, and at night they made love and slept wrapped up in each other.

At last, they made it to the Arendelle harbor, and long before their icy ship reached the dock Elsa could see her sister waiting for her, almost vibrating with the effort of not jumping into the frigid waters and swimming out to meet her. Kristoff and Olaf were with her, and they could hear the little snowman shouting from half a mile out. "She's alive! She's alive! I told you guys she was alive!"

The ship was still five feet away from docking when Anna couldn't stand it any longer and hurled herself across the divide to land on the deck and fling her arms around her sister. "Elsa!" she shrieked. "You're safe! Thank god you're safe!"

Elsa embraced Anna, squeezing hard, and crying with her little sister from the sheer solace of their reunion. "I'm safe," she said. "I'm here. Thanks to Hiksti."

Anna looked at the man over her sister's shoulder, and her eyes, so close in color to Elsa's, narrowed dangerously. "What… happened?" she asked, her voice a barely suppressed inferno of rage. "Your answer had better be good or I'll hang you as many times as necessary."

"At this point, once would be enough," Hikist noted with a savage little smile. He tossed the rope to Kristoff, who'd been waiting for their little ship to drift closer.

The blonde man tied it off and came aboard, too, followed by Olaf, who wrapped his little stick arms around his creator and snuggled with a happy sigh. "Please don't do that again," he said plaintively. "I don't particularly like dying."

"I'm sorry," Elsa told him, breaking just far enough away from Anna that she could reach down and touch Olaf's head. "I didn't mean to scare anyone."

"What do you mean?" Kristoff asked Hiksti.

"The curse is broken," Elsa answered, pulling back from Anna. Her smile was bright enough to rival the sun. "We did it."

Anna was astonished. "You… found Loki?"

Hiksti nodded. "And his wife, and his daughter. And technically his son, sort of…" he shrugged a shoulder.

Elsa shuddered at the memory of the oppressive grief in that cave. "We broke the curse, and Hiksti is as mortal as you and I, now."

Anna searched Elsa's face for a few moments. "What happened?" she asked softly.

"Let's go inside and have some hot chocolate and peppermints and we'll tell you the whole story," the Snow Queen suggested.

And that's just what they did.

Well, almost - they did leave out a few personal bits.

Anna, of course, was furious that they had left without her, and Elsa and Hiksti took her anger, let her vent it out upon them. There was a lot of apologizing, but eventually she forgave them, because when you love someone, you do that.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Of course Hiksti moved into Elsa's cabin in the Northuldran village. Anna was scandalized at the thought and let her sister know about it when Elsa arrived the next week for a visit, and to pick up a few surprises for Hiksti's workspace - he'd already built an addition to the cabin and staked it out as his creative place and called it his studio.

"You can't live with a man who isn't your husband," Anna said quietly, her face lined with anxiety at the thought.

"I can," Elsa said simply. "And it's happening. It's okay." She watched as a few servants loaded all kinds of things into a waiting sled - canvases and paints and brushes and a small anvil and assorted smithing tools and metal ingots - the forge had been built already - a drafting table and supplies, whittling and carving knives, and various and sundry other creative tools.

"But… what if you get… with child?" Anna asked quietly.

Elsa shrugged. "Then you get a niece or nephew."

"I… can't believe you're being so irresponsible about this," Anna pouted crossly. "This will cause a scandal. How will it look? How will it reflect on our family, on me?"

That made Elsa pause. "Well…" her sister's worries became her own that quickly. The benefit of moving to Northuldra in the first place was leaving all of the politics behind. She was loathe to let it dictate her life, now. "Why does anyone have to know?"

"People will find out," the redhead pointed out. "They always do. Can't you just… marry him?"

"I don't even know if he wants to do that," Elsa sighed. "It's not something we've discussed."

"But - but - but you're… Elsa what are you thinking?!" Anna started hyperventilating. "_Are_ you even thinking? At all?!"

Elsa reached for her sister and grasped her shoulders. "Okay, fine, I'll talk to him, okay? Just breathe, Anna, breathe."

When she arrived home the gloam was settling on the land and Hiksti had come out to meet her. "Elsa!" he called, jogging to meet her. "Wait 'til you see what I've made! It's great, you're gonna love it!"

Elsa grinned down at him and jumped off the sled to land in his arms. They kissed for a long moment before she pulled back. "I've got a surprise for you, too," she said.

"Oh, really?" he asked, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. "Does it involve fireworks?"

"Firew- no," she laughed. "Help me unpack."

They unloaded the sled and Elsa explained everything, and he was pleased and grateful for every gift. She really loved seeing the happy sparkle in his peridot eyes, the way he took the time to examine each and every item and make plans to use it. "I'll paint your portrait," he said, reverently laying the oil paints in a velvet-lined box. "I'll forge you a ring," he promised, hefting the small anvil and adjusting it just so next to the forge. "Someday, I'll whittle a doll for our child," he pledged.

"And what was your surprise for me?" she asked once the sled was empty and they were inside the cabin once again.

"Oh, well…" he looked bashful all of a sudden, and scratched the back of his head. "Just a book, really."

"A book?" she asked, intrigued.

"Yeah, it's…" he took her hand and led her to the table, and they sat down together. He pulled a large book toward them and showed her the cover. "It's a book about dragons," he said.

"Dragons?"

He nodded, and reverently opened it. "Everything I remember. Every type, their characteristics, abilities, habitats, breeding habits, migration patterns, foods… all of it."

She leaned forward to look at the first page, where he had drawn a magnificent coal-black dragon with a blunt, flat head and an impressive wingspan. Next to it, only slightly smaller, was a snow-white dragon with subtle differences. He'd used ink and colored pencils to color the page.

"This is Toothless," he told her, his voice so full of wistfulness that it almost brought tears to her eyes. "And his mate."

"Night Fury," she read the caption aloud. "Light Fury." She paused. "They were beautiful."

"Yeah," he agreed. "They all were. Beauty and power and a force of nature and capable of such pure love and devotion…" He turned those eyes to her and she was momentarily lost in them. "I loved them for all the same reasons I love you. I wanted to share this with you, my memories, because even after all this time, they are important to me and they made me who I am in such a fundamental way."

She was touched, and she reached for him, and for a long time they didn't say much.

Hours later they were curled around each other under the blankets of her bed, looking out the window to the aurora borealis as it played its weird light across the sky. He was sleepily drawing patterns on her arm, and she liked the tickling, and liked that she could feel the thump of his heartbeat beneath her cheek.

"I have something to ask you," she said sleepily.

"Hm?"

"Will you marry me?"

"Yeah, of course," he said, a smile in his voice. "When's good?" He didn't even stop tickling her arm in slow motion.

She grinned and snuggled deeper into his embrace. "As soon as we can get it set up, I guess. Let me send a letter to Anna and invite them all here, and maybe Yelana can perform the ceremony."

"Sounds perfect," he sighed happily, and kissed the crown of her head.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Elsa sent the letter the next morning, watching as Gale took it and made it soar like the bird it was folded to resemble. Then she went about her day. She visited Ahtohallan, roamed the forest, had a chat with the earth giants, went on a tandem ride on the Nokk with Hiksti, spent some quality time with him and a picnic basket, and read from the book he'd made.

The sun was lowering in the sky, painting it gorgeous reds and passionate oranges when Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven showed up in a sled piled high to overflowing with mysterious cloth-wrapped packages. They were followed by yet another sled, this one driven by Kai, with Gerda at his side.

"Anna!" Elsa cried, gladly running out to meet her sister. The two embraced and Anna immediately began babbling.

"I got your letter and we got here as soon as we could," she said breathlessly. "I'm _so_ glad you two are getting married!" She squealed and jumped up and down a couple of times before Gerda cleared her throat in a gentle, non-verbal reminder that she was a monarch, now, in addition to being a grown woman, and to please act like it. The redhead threw the older woman an exasperated look but settled down. "We have absolutely everything we need to throw a wedding right here, tomorrow."

"Alright," Elsa said.

Yelana and Honeymaren and Ryder came up to the little convoy and greetings were had all around, hugs and handshakes and inquires after health. "What is all of this?" Yelana asked, gesturing to the two over-full carts. Ryder helped Kristoff unhitch the reindeer and then led them toward a cozy little shelter while Kristoff stayed with his fiance.

"You didn't tell her?" Anna asked Elsa. "You didn't ask?"

"I guess it just… slipped my mind," Elsa said with a self-conscious smile. "I was busy, today."

Anna raised her eyebrows pointedly.

"Ah, right," Hiksti said, jumping in. "Yelana, would you perform the wedding ceremony?" He paused. "I mean, mine and Elsa's. We're getting married. Maybe tomorrow, if that's okay?"

Yelana looked gobsmacked for a moment, and then she threw her head back and laughed. "Of course I will," she agreed, her gaze on the two of them approving and warm. "Let's go inside out of the cold and talk about things."

So they did.

After the planning was finalized Yelana and the other Northuldran left, Kai and Gerda went upstairs to the large open common room where they would spend the night, leaving the two sisters and their loves and Olaf, who was on his stomach gazing at the fire, within which nestled Bruni. Sven had chosen to remain outside to visit with the other reindeer.

Kristoff stood at the window and looked out toward the cozy shelter, where he could dimly make out Sven nuzzling a reindeer cow. "Must be something in the air," he chuckled. "Look at him go! He's got a girlfriend!"

"Oh, that's nice," Olaf commented.

Elsa nudged Hiksti, who cleared his throat. "So, uh, Kristoff?"

The big blonde man turned. He wasn't actually that much taller than Hiksti, maybe one or two inches at the most, but his shoulders were so broad that he seemed to take up half again as much space. "Yeah?" he asked, eyes wide open.

"I was wondering," Hiksti said slowly. "It's been a long time since I've had a… well, a friend, and, uh, I think you qualify." He paused. "Right?"

"Yeah? I mean, yeah!" Kristoff said again, his face alight with happiness and bro-love. "That's - that's great, Hiksti, I'm glad you think so. I'd really like to be your friend!"

"Excellent," Hiksti said. "So, uh… seeing as how we're officially friends, now, and we'll be brothers soon enough… would you maybe wanna be my best man? For the wedding?"

For a moment Anna was afraid that the love of her life was going to die of happiness. Kristoff's chest swelled and he almost shed a tear before nodding and reaching out to take Hiksti's hand in his. He pumped it up and down a few times. "I would be… absolutely honored," he said, and then he had to clear his voice to disguise the tremble.

"Well, great," Hiksti said. "That's great. Thanks, bud."

"He called me bud," Kristoff whispered to Anna.

Anna giggled and wrapped her arms around Kristoff's bicep, then whispered in his ear.

"Hiksti, will you be mine?" Kristoff asked in a rush. "I mean, my mest ban. Best man. What?"

Hikst chuckled and slugged Kristoff's shoulder. "Yeah, bud. I'll be your best man, too."

Kristoff did a fist-pump and everyone laughed. Anna turned her eyes to her sister and looked rather expectant. She'd already asked Elsa to be her maid of honor months ago, and of course it was a given that Elsa would say yes.

Elsa smiled and linked her fingers with Hiksti's. "Will you be my maid of honor, Anna?"

"Of course!"

With that last little detail settled, they decided to retire for the night, as they would all have to be up early in the morning.

Elsa was about to step into her bedroom when the reality of the sleeping arrangements hit her and she stopped at the threshold, and almost got trampled by Hiksti'd who'd naturally been following her. Anna was hoving just behind him looking uncertain and anxious. "Hiksti, perhaps you'd better sleep in the other room with the boys," she suggested.

Hiksti blinked down at her, made a very short annoyed face, and then nodded. "You're right," he sighed. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and she rose up on her toes to kiss him on his lips. "Good night. I'll see you in the morning."

"Sleep well," she wished him.

Anna followed her into the room and just before she closed the door she heard Kristoff murmur to Hiksti, "So… can you give me some advice about… you know… husbandly duties?"

Elsa firmly closed the door and then turned to her sister, her hands over her mouth to suppress the giggles that were trying to break free.

"What?" Anna asked curiously, already stepping out of her shoes and reaching up to take the pins out of her hair.

"Nothing," Elsa chuckled. "Just… your fiance being a kind and considerate person, is all." She took her own shoes off and took the tie out of her braid and started to comb her fingers through it. "You're lucky to have him."

"I know," Anna said dreamily. "I'm jealous that you and Hiksti can just elope like this. Royal weddings take _forever_ to plan!"

"It's not eloping," Elsa pointed out. "Everyone who counts is here."

"You know what I mean," Anna grouched. She turned her back and gestured to the buttons marching down her dress, and Elsa obligingly began undoing them after first glancing at the curtains to make sure they were drawn tightly. "I can't even pick the flowers without having a state meeting. Who knew heather was a must-have?"

"You like heather," Elsa observed. She finished the buttons and Anna stepped out of her dress and laid it carefully across the back of a chair.

"Of course I do," Anna said. "But I also like roses and peonies and poppies and all sorts of flowers." She shrugged. "My _point_ is that I feel like my wedding is more for Arendelle than it is for me."

"Well, in a way it is," Elsa said. She gestured and her dress turned into a nightgown, simple and white, ankle-length. She turned back the covers and climbed into bed, followed by her sister. They lay on their sides looking at each other. "You're the queen, now, and the people want to see you happy and they want to feel secure. One way to do that is through symbols and traditions, like heather and crocuses and bunads."

"That's another thing," Anna said. "I thought it would be fabulous to wear a white dress instead of a bunad."

Elsa raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Oh, you haven't seen Queen Victoria's wedding photograph?" Anna said. "It's the most beautiful, fabulous…" she sighed. "But the white dress got nixed and a bunad it is." She pouted. "If my daughter wants to wear a white dress - or any color - she can!"

"You know," Elsa said. "You are the queen. You can just tell them that you want to wear a white dress and they'll have to do it."

"But… the people," Anna sighed.

Elsa gave her a sympathetic look. "I know," she said. "Believe me, I know." Then she grinned. "Maybe it can be a white bunad?"

Anna grinned back. "I like that idea," she murmured.

They snuggled close and slept soundly.

The next morning was a flurry of activity from breakfast to lunch, while everyone decorated and prepared. It was to be a mish-mash of traditions - Arendelle traditions mixed with Northuldran and Viking.

When it was time to get dressed, Elsa conjured matching outfits for herself and her love - sapphire-blue and white formal attire complete with capes and magical ice medallions, and small ice-flower crowns for both of them that glinted like diamonds. From Elsa's crown white and blue ribbons hung down her unbound hair.

Hiksti couldn't take his eyes off of her and a smile that was equal parts appreciation, pride, and love tugged at his lips. "You look so beautiful," he whispered. He reached for her hands. "You weren't kidding about your fashion prowess."

She accepted his grasp and looked up at him. "And you look incredibly handsome," she said softly. "Are you ready?"

"Let's do this."

They were led to the banks of the river by Kai, who played the fiddle for them, a sprightly number that almost had them dancing to the tune. The path was lined with pine needles that let off a fragrant evergreen scent with every step. They were followed by Anna and Kristoff, and two more young, recently-married Northuldran couples. It seemed that no matter where they looked, there were evergreen boughs and pinecones and ribbons adorning every surface. Elsa's magic had added sparkle and flair, of course. Everyone was dressed in their very best and smiling brightly enough to rival the sun.

They reached the center of the village where Yelana awaited them. Their vows were simple and full of meaning. They exchanged simple gold wedding rings - both of which Hiksti had forged himself - and then gave each other swords - these had been designed by Hiksti and created by Elsa using her magic. They held hands and the old woman bound them together with an intricately embroidered wide ribbon, full of Arendelle crocuses. She blessed their union and the joining of their families.

Then she raised her staff and asked for the blessing of the forest. The four elements answered.

First Bruni leapt from fire-pit to fire-pit, lighting them all with his pinkish flames before bounding into a snow drift and crooning happily. Gale lifted Hiksti and Elsa off of their feet and twirled them around in the air as they laughed and held hands. The earth giants rose up from where they'd been sitting just beyond the tree line so that they could peer down at the wedding, and then they opened their great maws to sing. As the Northuldran song rang back in joyous answer, the Nokk reared up from the river's water, and Gale deposited Hiksti and Elsa gently onto his back. With a toss of his watery head, the Nokk took off at a gallop.

And that's how they left for their honeymoon.


	15. Epilogue

Nearly six months later, Anna of Arendelle, First of her Name, Protector of the People, and Defender of the Faith, affectionately titled the Summer Queen, and her new husband, the Prince Consort Kristoff Bjorgman, the Duke of Flekkefjord, Royal Ice Master and Deliverer, made their way down the aisle to the waiting carriage outside. Elsa and Hiksti flanked the door, happily smiling at the newlyweds.

Anna had worn that white bunad, after all, embroidered with crocuses and symbols of summer and plenty, with gold medallions and a delicate, soaring gold-and-enamel crown embedded with diamonds and topaz, and Kristoff's garments matched in color and embroidering. His own hair was slicked back and a very simple crown sat upon his blonde head.

Kristoff handed his brand new wife into the carriage and put a foot on the step. Before he heaved himself inside, though, he turned to Elsa and glared at her. "You made me a _duke_?"

Elsa shrugged, not looking guilty in the slightest. "You're welcome."

"Why didn't you _tell_ me?"

She laughed and pushed him, forcing him to step up. "It's more fun this way!"

Hiksti shut the door behind them. "Bye! Have fun on your honeymoon! Don't come back for a month, we've got things covered, here." Technically Anna's advisors had things covered here, but that was just semantics.

"We will!" Anna chimed, gently elbowing Kristoff out of the way and sticking her head out of the carriage window. "Elsa, I love you. Thank you for today, it was magical!"

"Just a little," Elsa said happily. She kissed her sister's cheek. "You're welcome. Now go, enjoy your husband." She waggled her eyebrows.

Blushing, Anna gave her sister a sweet smile. "You, too." Then she retreated back inside and Kristoff knocked on the carriage roof, and the driver clicked his tongue to spur the horses forward.

"Now, we wait for the inevitable news," Hiksti said.

"It usually happens within the year, right?" Elsa asked him.

"Usually," he agreed.

They'd fallen into a comfortable routine at home. In the mornings Elsa went to Ahtohallan, and sometimes Hiksti came with her. When he did, they'd look back on some of his memories and he'd explain the historical events that he was swept up in from his own point of view. They were writing a book about it together and Elsa thought it would be a best-seller - they'd agreed to change Hiksti's name to something else to preserve their privacy.

When he didn't join her she delved into other matters, and practiced her magic, honed her power, until even she was left breathless from the scope of her ability. When he wasn't with her he was usually holed up in his studio creating all kinds of inventions, many of which found their way into the cabin and into the Northuldran village.

They always met for lunch, either at home or somewhere in the forest, which they delighted in exploring with Gale and Bruni and the Earth giants. Sometimes they rode the Nokk to a nearby island where they could be alone together.

After a month of honeymooning, Anna and Kristoff came back, and four months after that, during one of their visits to the castle, Anna confessed to her family the inevitable news that everyone in the kingdom had been anxiously waiting for; that she and Kristoff were expecting a child in August. It was Elsa's twenty-fifth birthday, and that was just about the best present she'd ever been given.

Hiksti clapped Kristoff on the shoulders, grinning fit to bust. "Congratulations, man! That's amazing!"

"I know, right?!" Kristoff said, grabbing Hiksti by the ribs and dancing him around in a victory jig. "You two are the first people we've told. I mean, the royal physician knows, obviously, and Elin -" that was Anna's lady's maid, "- probably has her suspicions, but, I mean, we're so excited!"

Anna and Elsa were just hugging and hugging, both of them crying a little bit and laughing even more as their husbands danced around the room, and Olaf broke into song about his new little cousin-to-be and Sven capered - carefully - around the couch with the men.

Elsa knew that this was Anna'a dream come true - a family. Such a simple dream for a queen, but truly all that Anna had ever wanted. And now that she was building her own, Elsa knew that she could finally start putting into motion her plan.

Elsa was going to find the dragons, and bring them back to the world.

End of Book 1

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Hello, everyone, and thank you SO MUCH for all of the positive reviews that you've left! It has really motivated me to write more. As I wrapped up this story I was just very, very happy, and felt that this was a good place to stop. I wanted to write this story because I wanted to READ this story, and knowing that others out there shared my enthusiasm just made me that much more energized!

I am hoping to do a sequel story, and will probably have that in the works very soon. I can't promise that the chapters will come as fast as the ones I wrote for SN&DR, but I'll try to keep up with them.

One thing I do plan to do differently with the sequel will be to thank all the reviewers of the previous chapter at the bottom of the next chapter. I'm a little sad that so many people without accounts left reviews, so I couldn't respond to them personally. But to all of you out there who read and enjoyed my story and took the time to leave a review and/or favorite, I want to give you my sincere gratitude!

-Fluffy


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